


When We Were Young

by ashesandhoney



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alien Culture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Childhood Friends, F/M, Marriage Proposal, No Voltron
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 14:06:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 27,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10832826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashesandhoney/pseuds/ashesandhoney
Summary: When they were young they had hidden under tables at embassy events and eaten stolen pieces of cake. They had climbed up onto the roof at school and made up stories about the teachers walking to their cars at the end of the day. They weren't the same species but that had never stopped them before.It's been ten years since he last saw her.





	1. A New Job

It felt like an unnecessary indignity that the banquet hall was underground. Not only had he lost the chance he had worked his life for but his first replacement job was so far away from the sky there were two flights of stairs between where he stood and fresh air. He clenched his one good hand and straightened his back just a little bit more. It was just a job. It was now. It was not forever. Nothing was forever.

It was a set back. It was not defeat. This was the first step on the new road, nothing more but also nothing less.

Takashi Shirogane was a deep space pilot.

He was.

Had been.

Would be again.

At that moment, he was nothing more than a security guard in a fancy uniform.

There were aliens at the event and that meant any member of staff had to have passed the sensitivity and awareness training so as to avoid offending a Galra by calling them an Altean or bowing when you needed to maintain eye contact. They had hired people who already knew that. The application form had all but said, “Can handle basic weaponry and identify at least six of the allied species on sight,” as the only real job requirements. Shiro had a little bit more than the basic training so here he was on the main level where he’d probably be expected to meet people and talk to them.

The banquet hall dropped down into a huge natural cave. It was striking even without the spotlights picking out the rock formations in all their rough-edged glory. The whole resort had been built into a set of underground caves and this grand hall was the feature that they put on the brochures. It was great. He tried to remind himself that it was great. Beautiful. Whatever. Mostly he was just annoyed that it was three stories down and the two guys he was standing with were talking about basic training.

“Where did you do basic?”

“Seven,” he said pulling himself back to the conversation.

“What?”

“Moon base seven,” Shiro clarified.

“Dude. I thought moon bases didn’t take Earth-Siders. Do they really do basic in zero-g?”

“Some of it but we also had to do all the normal stuff. You don't get out of all the marching no matter where you do basic.”

“Are you a moon-kid?”

“No. I was born in California,” he said.

“Are you deep space?” his new friend asked poking at his uniform.

“Yes,” _I was_. He left out the past tense. The guy he was talking to was barely out of basic training. Shiro wasn’t old but he felt like it sometimes. He wasn’t even 30 but he’d already achieved and lost an entire career and wasn’t sure what to do next. He had started working for deep space when he was fifteen. Ten years of effort and work and it had disappeared in the course of one terrible accident. He wanted back in a cockpit and he wasn't sure it was ever going to happen.

"Deep space is the dream," his companion said and it was so close to the thoughts he was having that Shiro turned to look at him but couldn't think of anything to say.

Most of the security crew was military and they all wore their full dress uniforms. Shiro knew more about aliens than he did about the regional uniforms of various countries. He had no idea where this guy was from. The night before, Shiro had had dinner with a pair of Ugandans and a guy from Sweden who collected spoons. Shiro wasn’t wearing a national uniform. Deep Space was under the overview of the United Nations. They had their own standards and their own set of rules.

Shiro was wearing the medal they gave him in consolation for taking him off the deep space program after the accident. He wore white and black and the blue highlights that said UN very loudly to anyone who paid any attention. The insignia winked half-heartedly at him in the light from a chandelier overhead. He was surprised to realize that he was still proud of it. He was pissed off and bitter and had pages of research on his computer to back up the case he would bring by the end of the year but he was proud to wear the uniform and the medal even for this.

There were sounds from above and he took a moment to school his expression. He hadn't let his thoughts show on his face, he was sure of that, but it was important to look the part. He would likely be introduced to at least a few of the diplomats. His friend did the same after a moment of confusion as though he’d forgotten what they were doing or where they were in his rush of questions about the deep space flight program.

They were security but they were the kind of security that no one was supposed to know was security. The Tinnaelo hated the presence of paid staff in general and security in particular. They found capitalism disgusting on many levels. It was almost comical to watch humans attempt to find some common ground with them at opulent diplomatic events like this. Security was easy enough to hide and everyone just pretended they didn’t know. Shiro and the rest of this crew had been trained in all the details that a security guard would need to know but he was technically a guest. A guest with a sector to watch over but a guest.

The hosts were American diplomats who came down the hall in nice suits, talking animatedly to a group of human-looking aliens wearing mostly blue and white.

"Oh no, it's the space witches, why did we have to start with space witches?" the guy beside him muttered.

Shiro's lip twitched in annoyance but he didn't respond. He understood it. He thought people were ridiculous but he understood it.

Most of Earth’s allies were ring planets. The people from a far flung corner of the galaxy had made friends with other people from far flung corners of the galaxy. The central planets near the galactic core had trade deals and alliances and shared cultural festivals that went back thousands of years to long before most of the ring planets had even managed to launch satellites. They were insular, their technology was light-years ahead of everyone else’s, and, really, most of them were superior jackasses with imperial histories. Most Earthlings didn't like them. Earth's allies didn't like them. The central planets had tech and money and Earth's elites did like that.

The space witches were unusual even by central standards.

The Alteans were incredibly reclusive. It was rare for them to allow any xeno onto their soil. Meetings were held in very nice space stations above the surface or on someone else’s planet. They hadn’t fought in a war in living memory - not even border skirmishes - but had amassed some of the most terrifying weaponry that the galaxy had ever seen. They were a mystery wrapped in a bundle of possibly sentient weapons systems wrapped in pretty floral arrangements and nice clothes.

And they had magic.

Actual magic.

Sufficiently advanced technology might be indistinguishable from magic but what the Alteans could do was actual magic. It came from somewhere inside them, it allowed them to manipulate energy in their environment. They refused to allow it to be studied so how they did it was a guessing game to anyone but them. They had a few close alliances with unexpected species like the Balmoral but kept themselves to themselves more often than not.

They were weird.

Sword-guy was not the only person to call them space witches. A politician from a major nation had done it to one of the ambassador’s faces once and it would have caused a major incident if the man hadn’t thought it was the funniest thing in the world. That particular ambassador was an unusual guy on the best of days and was unusual by Altean social expectations too. He had introduced himself as Ambassador to the King Space Witch for a few weeks.

A moment later Shiro recognized that voice out of the incoming crowd.

The accent skewed British but if you were paying attention, it wasn’t quite right. The intonation was different. There were strange added words or the odd missed pronoun of a second language speaker. He spoke with such confidence and such adherence to the rules that he always seemed to be right even when he got the verbs wrong. His voice was almost as distinctive as the title Ambassador to the King Space Witch.

“Senator Coran, I am sure that the building is completely secure despite being below ground. It is structurally sound and has been here for nearly 50 years,” an earnest voice explained as they got closer.

“I’m not a senator. Was it hollowed out naturally or by machinery?” Coran asked.

Coran was just Coran. It was rare for Alteans to use titles if they weren’t members of the monarchy and though he had accepted Ambassador, he rarely used it. He walked a little ahead of the group in a bright blue suit. His red hair had been carefully styled in what might have been an imitation of an Earth fashion but if it was, it was decades out of date. He looked ridiculous beside the stern man in black who walked beside him and looked baffled at the questions about the building. He probably was a senator and he was probably trying to get some issue on the table for the trade negotiations, not talk about architecture.

Coran was one of the few Alteans who had spent much time on Earth. He spoke fluent if obnoxiously correct English as well as some French and Chinese which were by all accounts just as formal. Shiro had always liked him, even after that one time that Coran had picked him up by the back of his shirt and thrown him out of a door. He had been about eight at the time and had deserved it for the mess he’d made in Coran’s study. Shiro had read news articles about Coran that painted the man as a serious politician with the ear of the Altean king but in all Shiro’s memories he was either pompous or goofy or throwing children half way down hallways in fits of annoyance.

Shiro and his companion were supposed to be loitering and having light conversation and looking like guests not guards but the space-witch comment and the blast from the past that was Coran pontificating on architecture with a man in a suit had thrown him off. Coran rarely traveled with the King. He usually traveled with the older of the two Altean princesses and the very distant possibility that she was here was enough to make talking to a stranger difficult.

“Have you been following the deal in the news?” the guy asked.

“The Altean one? All the trade negotiations with the Americans?” Shiro asked.

“Aren’t you American? You’ve got the accent.”

“I’m a military brat. By passport and by who taught me to speak, yeah but I spent family vacations in Japan and lived in either London or on the moon more than I ever lived in the states. But yeah, I guess I'm American," he said.

His mother had grown up in Tucson but her parents had moved back to Tokyo before she had gotten married. She’d always taken the kids to visit them on holidays. She had taken a job and moved back to Arizona while Shiro had been away in training and he'd come back to stay with her while he went through physio. He had spent the last year and a half in the miserable desert heat but it wasn’t where he had grown up. He didn’t usually think of himself as American or anything else. London, Tokyo, the moon, the training base in Jiuquan, all those places were more home than suburban Tucson where his mother lived and taught math at a nearby university.

The Alteans had gotten closer and Coran’s obsession with the architecture had his conversation partner glancing back at the rest of the party for help. Coran had powered on ahead leaving the rest of the group halfway down the hallway. Shiro felt sorry for him. Coran wanted to understand things. Quick explanations rarely sufficed and he would ask more and more questions until something more important distracted him or he thought he was an expert. They were almost to where Shiro stood and he opened his mouth before he decided what he was going to say.

“Coran, is this like that time that you discovered what thatched rooftops were actually made out of?” he asked as they neared.

“Grass is an absurd building material! It needs to be replaced far too often. Subterranean construction is much more practical. I had always thought that Earth’s crust was either inhospitable to it or human technology was simply too rudimentary to achieve it but obviously, that is not true. Why don't you use it more often?" Coran said without breaking the flow of his conversation. It took him a moment to realize that it wasn’t his guide who had spoken.

He turned and frowned up at Shiro. That was more disconcerting than Shiro had predicted. He was better than six feet tall so being taller than someone wasn’t that surprising but Coran had always seemed ridiculously tall to him as a kid. Not only was he an actual alien but he was taller than the principal. Shiro could remember having that thought when he was about seven. Now Coran was six inches shorter than he was and looking at him like he couldn’t understand who he was.

“Have we met?” Coran asked.

“Not in almost ten years,” Shiro said.

He immediately regretted starting the conversation. Maybe it would have been better to let it all pass on by without saying anything. This wasn’t London. He wasn’t a kid. Coran obviously did not remember him. The soldier beside him was staring openly and the senator wasn’t much better. Shiro was going to get screamed at by a superior officer for interrupting this conversation. He shouldn’t have said a word in the first place but he had and now walking away would be even ruder.

Coran stared at him and tilted his head to the side, “What happened to your face?”

Shiro coughed out a laugh. He had been worried about being rude and Coran opened with that question. The crash and the head injury had left him with white hair and a scar that ran across the bridge of his nose in an slash that hadn't healed properly or faded much during his recovery.

"Well, I was fifteen the last time we spoke," he said and Coran frowned a little. Shiro shrugged and added, "Also most of a spaceship fell on it.”

“You were a cute child, annoying, always under foot, I remember you,” Coran said.

“It’s nice to be remembered,” Shiro said.

This was an awkward conversation. Shiro had had lots of them over the years. Conversations with his mother’s friends, with an ex-girlfriend from college with chatty cashiers in super markets. This was an awkward conversation and yet Coran’s refusal to notice how awkward it all was made it seem like it was perfectly normal in spite of all the humans who were staring at him for daring to speak to the strange alien space witch non-senator like he was someone’s weird uncle.

That wasn’t far from the truth Coran was someone’s weird uncle. He was the princess’s weird uncle and the princess had been the one who was responsible for Shiro being under foot in Coran’s office and the Altean embassy in London.

It was as though the thought made her appear.

“Shall I warn you about letting him follow you around everywhere?” Coran asked in Altean as she stepped up beside him looking polite and political and perfect. The comment made her frown at Coran before she noticed Shiro standing there. Shiro knew a little Altean, enough to follow simple conversations but was still surprised that he had understood that so easily.

Shiro had seen pictures since he’d last seen her in person but they didn’t measure up. She had grown up pretty. No. Shiro’s little sister had grown up pretty. Allura needed stronger words but he couldn’t find them. She wore a silvery blue gown that covered her from neck to wrist to ankle in a mix of clinging lace and soft drifts of silk. Her hair was pulled up and away from her face. She looked at him with that benign polite curiosity of a politician who had to speak to too many strangers in a day and just couldn’t care anymore.

A second later, her expression shifted. Recognition, surprise, something like shock.

“Kashi?” she said.

His expression had to have matched. She was the only person who had ever called him that and he had forgotten it until it fell out of her mouth. He was too disoriented by the familiarity of her voice and the little smile that spread across her face. He had been fine when it had been Coran. Maybe a little too familiar for the top brass of this mission to be comfortable with but fine.

He was not fine with her. He didn’t remember how to be a person when she was giving him that smile. Instead of being a person, he responded as a soldier.

“Good evening, princess,” he said and then he bowed even though she would have kicked him for it when they were children. Here she was waltzing into his life without warning and throwing off his thoughts. She was not just a diplomat. She was a dignitary. A princess who deserved the utmost respect. She was also the girl who had thrown food at him in the middle of school lunches and she was resurrecting the most ridiculous nickname of his childhood in the middle of his first job in more than two years. He didn't know how to respond to her.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, ignoring the title.

“I’m a very official guest,” he said with a bit of a smile.

It made the senator beside Coran make a noise in his throat. The Alteans jumped through the same hoops as the humans did to appease the Tinnaelo and both Allura and Coran knew what he was talking about but still, secrets were secrets even if everyone knew them. Shiro should have known better than that. He was too thrown off.

“Obi Wan," she said.

He shook his head at her and she smirked.

From a distance this was a polite conversation but that was a ridiculous request at a dinner like this. It had been a not-very-clever code word that they had come up with when he’d been trying to convince her watch the Star Wars series by showing her youtube clips. She had thought he was ridiculous and refused to sit through the movie. Still that one joke had stuck. _Obi Wan, you are my only hope. You have to save me from a terrible state dinner._ That had been a possibility when she had been a precocious twelve year old and they could sit under tables and no one would notice. It was less of a possibility when she was a guest of honour.

She tried again, "Later, usual place?"

There were people around who were close enough to hear them. Coran had dragged his senator escort off to discuss stalactites but he didn't rank high enough to be talking to her at all. She was not a kid anymore. Neither was he. There was getting his ass dragged through the fire for being inappropriately chatty with Coran and then there was the shit storm that would happen if someone thought he was harassing a dignitary.

He forgot how to speak. The silence dragged for a moment when he should have answered. The guy he didn’t know, the one with all the questions about deep space, said, “Of course, when?”

“Later,” she said.

“Ok,” Shiro managed to choke out before someone else could answer for him again.

Then she was gone. She had noticed that they were out of line having a conversation like that in the middle of a dinner party. The rest of the crowd was coming down the hall and the Alteans were off into the cavern so that Coran could ask obnoxious questions and Allura could be too beautiful to be believed. He stood very still and frowned at the space where she had been standing.

What had just happened?

“Oh my god, did the High Princess of the Alteans just ask you to meet her for illicit sex? Not that that isn’t hot, I just heard somewhere that Alteans aren’t normal down there, you know? Also High Princesses don't really do that. Do they? I thought space witches hated everyone.”

“You need to shut up," Shiro said as conversationally as he could.

"Just trying to help."

"You are the opposite of helpful right now,” Shiro snapped, “I don’t even know you.”

“My name’s Lance.”

“Lance, you are the opposite of helpful.”

“You were about to say something like, ‘No, incredibly hot alien chick, I don’t want to meet you in the usual place to bang,’ which would have been the worst decision in the history of the universe. I saved your ass from years of regret. I mean, if you really don’t want to go, if you tell me where the usual place is, I’ll go for you. I don’t mind. It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”

"That conversation didn't happen because that conversation, especially your version of that conversation - which is not what just happened - could get me arrested," Shiro muttered.

"True. I will take that secret to my grave. Me and Ambassador Space Witch are the only ones who heard it and I think he ships it."

"I am going to go start the rotation," Shiro said and he walked away to go find another position, any other position to stand in while he tried to clear his head.


	2. Up on the Rooftop

She perched on the edge of the roof with her feet dangling off the edge. Some Altean bodyguard tasked with keeping her alive would probably be having a fit if they knew. She sat with her back straight and her hair tied tightly back. Her dark coat that hung down over the edge of the ledge making her look like something magical from a children’s fairy tale. They were on a flat gravel rooftop below the fancy brick facade that was visible from the parking lot below. It wasn't as nice as the old Victorian building at the boarding school they had attended as children but there was something familiar about being up above the world, hiding from everyone else, together.

The usual place had been the kitchen rooftop of Windsor Hall where the cafeteria was. They’d figured out how to get up there just before her ninth birthday. Shiro could remember balancing cupcakes with on dirty slate shingles. That roof had been high enough to give them a view but had enough cover that they could hide without getting caught. They had been caught more than once but they had kept coming back.

Tonight, she’d chosen the roof over the banquet hall building that looked out on the staff parking lot. He had gone to the wrong kitchen near the hotel first so he was late by the time he finally found the place where she was sitting. 

When she heard his foot steps, she turned and smiled. It was the same smile that she had always had, even when she'd been a gap-toothed little girl in a pleated skirt. She had grown up beautiful. That shouldn't have been so surprising, he'd seen her face on the news in the years since but it wasn't the same as seeing it up close. She was utterly familiar and distractingly pretty, all at once. He was quiet for too long but she didn't start the conversation either so he crossed the space between them and sat down beside her.

She looked at him and then let her attention drift out to lights in the distance. The summit was being held in a remote resort for security reasons. Security reasons and the desire to show off to the dignitaries. The land around them was all forest. It was beautiful and he wasn't even sure what city it was glowing faintly on the horizon.

"How many security feeds are we on right now?" she asked.

"Three."

"You know that?" she asked laughing.

He hadn't been joking and hesitated for a moment before saying, "There's a camera on that little building thing where the door is, we're on the edge of the frame here but we'd be visible. There's one on that building across the way, it's trained on the entrance but we're probably visible if someone was to zoom in. And then there's the satellite imagery. It's just a matter of whether or not anyone cares enough to be watching."

"Should we do something to catch their attention?"

"What were you thinking?"

"Arson."

She said it in a flat voice and Shiro turned to look at her but she was looking out at the distant city again. A bit of hair had escaped and the breeze made it flutter against her cheek. He was staring. Goddamn it. Her lips twitched in just a hint of a smile and reminded him of what she had just said.

"Arson would probably get me tried for treason," he said.

"So not that? Skinny dipping?"

"Where?"

"Can't do it here?"

"Do Alteans swim in gravel?" he asked.

"Skinny dipping is swimming?"

"You don't know what it is?"

"I heard it mentioned in a movie back in high school. It was a thing kids in movies did that they got in trouble for."

Shiro turned to her. She glanced at him and shrugged. He swung a knee back over the edge and faced her. She mirrored him, tucking one of her feet up under her. She was wearing a gown in a dark colour that looked almost black in the dim light that reached them from the faux-antique streetlamps lining the paths and parking lots below them. The sense that she was something magical that didn’t belong here wasn’t lessening.

"Are you going to tell me what it means?" she asked.

"If I had said yes, would you have just gone on pretending you knew what was about to happen?"

"Pretending to understand baffling cultural practices while they are happening is a skill I mastered when I was about five years old."

Shiro cracked a grin and said, "Skinny dipping is swimming naked."

"Well," she said but didn't finish the sentence.

Shiro started to laugh.

She kicked him in the shin with the leg that was dangling over the edge which only made him laugh harder. She was still something magical but it was a more accessible kind of magic when she was embarrassed. She watched him with a strange expression on her face that was probably suppressed annoyance at him for laughing like that. When they'd been young, being laughed at had made her furious no matter the context. He pulled himself back together and she was still watching him with that same expression and he was less sure of how to read it the longer it lasted.

"When did this happen?" she asked.

She spoke in a soft voice that turned everything sideways even before he figured out what she meant. She reached up but stopped before she touched his face. Her fingers hesitated for a moment before they retreated to her lap, vanishing into the long sleeves of her jacket. He blinked. He was too aware of it. He refused to let self-consciousness stop him from doing things he wanted to do but that didn't mean it wasn't there. What did people imagine when they saw it? Did they feel pity? Did it disturb or disgust them? He tried to stop those thoughts in their tracks but they lingered sometimes.

Allura had known him before. Long before. That made it worse.

His mother had moved to Arizona when he'd been at the academy. He had gone off to training and then out into space and when he’d come home broken, he’d come home to a place he had never lived before. His friends were all so far away from this part of his life. He hadn’t had to face the moment where someone else evaluated the scar and the hair and metal arm. Most of his recovery had been witnessed by absolute strangers.

"Almost two years ago," he said.

"Did you get hit in the face with a cricket bat?" she asked.

They had always laughed about cricket. The school, the one where he'd befriended her in a reception classroom because he was the only kid who hadn't realized that he was supposed to be afraid of aliens, had been in England. There was a cricket team that the Brits took very seriously and neither of them had ever been able to truly make sense of the rules. Shiro had even played it and there were still rules he didn’t understand.

Shiro had grown up watching baseball and tried to teach her that game once and she hadn't been able to make sense of that either. Alteans didn't play competitive sports and unless the rules could be simplified to nothing more than "put ball in other net," she always found it needlessly complex. He didn't have much luck with understanding their games either. They didn’t have enough rules or made the rules up on the fly and generally left him feeling lost.

Shiro cracked that same grin at her at the memory of it. It wasn't really a funny story but if he told it with a smile, people tended to be less upset by it. His therapist thought he used misplaced humour as a coping mechanism. There might be truth to that but if it kept people from looking too upset by it all, then it was worth it.

"My ship malfunctioned and went down on an asteroid out in the Kuiper Belt," he said.

"Ship."

"I'm a pilot. I was on a distance mission with a scientific crew. We were supposed to swing back around to make a dark side landing on Kerberos. We didn't make it. It was a malfunction in the navigation, we were off track by a lot and by the time I retook manual controls, there wasn't any way to stop the crash."

"Crash."

"Ice cream."

“Excuse me?"

"I thought it was a random noun game," he said.

"You crashed. On the edge of the solar system?" she said.

She wasn't going to let him deflect the conversation with humour. Her expression was more than serious. Her eyes were too wide, her lips tight, even her posture had changed. She leaned in a little and there was tension in her shoulders.

"Hey, don’t look at me like that, it wasn't that bad."

"That was the worst of it?" she asked. This time she did touch him, just a ghost of contact, her fingers along the bridge of his nose before her hands disappeared into her sleeves again. She was leaning in and he reached out with the good hand, his only hand. Maybe he had planned to pat her shoulder but she grabbed his hand before he could touch her. She held onto him with both of her hands, squeezing a little too tightly. He'd forgotten how strong she was and how unaware of it she was. It brought back waves of sense memory that left him feeling like a little kid again.

"Not really but don't look so worried. It's fine."

"Tell me."

"Once upon a time-"

"Kashi."

He sighed and looked away from her.

"The ship went down. I lived through it. No one else did. I was wearing a flight suit so when the ship depressurized...,” He paused and then rushed through the rest of it, “Well, I lived through it. I have a traumatic head injury and spent nearly thirty-six hours pinned by a collapsed atmospheric shield panel and lost most of my left arm, broke a bunch of other bones and still have massive memory issues from the head injury.”

“You almost died,” she said.

“Didn’t die,” he said.

“I didn’t even know you’d made pilot,” she shook her head and frowned at him.

“You say that like you did something wrong. You moved away when we were fourteen. There’s no reason for you to know. We lost contact, it happens. Don’t look all guilty.”

She stared. They had been old enough to keep up on social media and chat sites but she hadn’t been allowed any of that because her father’s advisors had never trusted the internet and had thought it put her at undue risk. There had been a few letters sent by envelope and stamp but eventually he stopped getting responses from those. It wasn’t her fault that he’d been hurt and there was nothing for her to feel guilty about and yet here she was with that expression on her face.

“Do you have a cellphone?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I have the number?”

“Yeah, hang on,” he said digging in his pockets for the device and holding it out to her.

“Trust me when I say, I don’t know how to use it to do anything but the simplest functions, I have had mine for three days,” she said.

He turned it back around and created a contact for her. She watched him, leaning in so she could see what he was doing. They faced each other and she leaned in close enough that he felt a bit of her hair brush his face. He glanced up without moving and she was still looking at the screen, oblivious and lit from below in the bluish light. When she noticed a second later that he had stopped typing on the screen, she looked up and she was still far too close. Nose to nose. Almost touching. He could tilt his head and lean in that last fraction of space and kiss her.

“I need your number,” he said without moving because if he moved he was pretty sure he was going to try for a kiss and that would be a disaster.

She blinked once and he thought he had done something to make it a disaster but then she was rhyming off the number and telling him to send her a message and seeming very pleased about the entire thing like she’d mastered some new skill. The horror of when he’d first told her had faded. She watched him as he finished sending her a text message that read nothing more than, “Hi,” because he couldn’t think straight when she was watching him so carefully.

It took him another moment to realize why she was watching him.

“This one,” he said, waving his hand at her.

“This one?”

“This on is the fake hand. It’s a good fake made with fancy cutting edge experimental technology. Cost more than most cars and the surgery that wires it into my brain so I can,” he wiggled the fingers, “Cost even more than that.”

“Oh, right,” there was a very brief moment of confusion on her face that left him wondering if she hadn’t been looking at his hand at all but then she asked, “Does it hurt?” which was one of Those Questions. He had a short list of Those Questions. The ones that made him want to answer with sarcasm and a glare. He kept that in because it was Allura and she was still looking at him and he didn’t want her to leave. He also didn’t want her to pity him or fuss over him.

The truth was: Yes. Most of the time.

What he said was: “It’s fine.”

He leaned in a little closer, she didn’t back away so he didn’t stop. He did not touch her as he brought his mouth close to her ear. He was playing with fire and it was going to hurt when he got burned but she still hadn’t shied away from him or told him to back off. He forgot for a moment what he was going to say because she smelled good: like citrus and clean laundry and something soft and warm.

“What are you going to do with my phone number?” he asked.

Was that what he had planned to say when he’d started?

Had he planned to say anything?

Had he just wanted to be closer to her and thought that it was a good idea?

What was wrong with him?

Why hadn’t he pulled back yet?

She turned into him a little bit and he felt her breath on his ear and that was a very good reason to pull away and an utterly compelling one to stay right where he was, all at once. They were so close and yet not quite touching. Touching her was impossible.

“Check on you to make sure you aren’t dead,” she said.

Anything he might have said, any line that had felt almost within reach fell apart as he started to laugh. She made an annoyed sound and broke the invisible barrier of space between them to punch him in his real shoulder hard enough to hurt. He was still laughing as he scooted farther down the wall they were sitting on. He wasn’t quite out of range but he was laughing harder.

“Do I need to check in like a kid with a curfew?” he asked.

“Shut up,” she said.

“Oh, or a captain’s log? Star-Date whatever, attended physio, had dinner with mother, went for a run, not dead.”

“Never mind, you’ve gotten more annoying with age. I’m going back inside with the stuffy politicians to discuss percentages and tariffs,” she said.

She stood and started to walk away. He reached out, his brain didn’t always remember which hand was the missing one and his metal arm was the one that swung up to catch her by the wrist and tug her back. He flinched as soon as he realized what he had done but she just stopped and turned on him. They were both standing now. He didn’t remember standing up. She was almost exactly his height.  

“You never showed me that space movie,” she said.

He had forgotten what they were talking about but he was pretty sure that it wasn’t movies.

“Space movie?”

“Star something.”

“You still haven’t seen Star Wars?”

“Watching low-brow popular culture films from decades ago does not help one get into university.”

 “It does help one not describe themselves using ‘one’ though and I think that’s an important lesson.”

She had gone away to a private girls’ school for high school and then on to Oxford. The gossip sites liked to say that she got in because they bent the grade benchmarks for the alien princess but Shiro was pretty sure she just aced the tests or interviews or whatever else it took to get into a school like that. She was brilliant. Gossip sites missed everything important. She was gorgeous and wore designer shoes to lecture halls and had someone to do her hair for her in the morning but she was also brilliant. She had always been brilliant.

“You’re a low brow kind of person,” she said and then immediately started to apologize once she realized that what she had said wasn’t cute or funny. He held up a hand before she could say anything else. She looked embarrassed but fell silent. 

“I’m a Neanderthal but that doesn’t mean not watching Star Wars and expecting to fully understand Earth culture is possible,” he said.

“One sci-fi movie is not a part of all Earth culture. Your planet has hundreds of distinct cultures. I’m sure lots of them don’t care about Star Wars.”

“I suppose it is possible but I doubt it. You shouldn’t take the chance.”

“Shut up, Kashi,” she said and shoved him again.

The weird tension when she had leaned into him was gone and she was just Allura. She had pushed him like this when they were kids on the playground. He hadn’t been bigger than her then. He had been a little kid. Fast and clever maybe but always the littlest in the class photo. He’d woken up one day, about halfway through high school and that hadn’t been true any more. It had seemed to happen overnight. Allura had been taller than him almost the entire time that he had known her and while it was only a handful of centimeters he had on her now, he had enough upper body strength to go with that tiny height advantage to lift her off her feet.

She realized a fraction too late that that was what he was planning on doing. He caught her around the waist and picked her up. She was laughing too hard to struggle. She just braced her hands on his shoulders and let him carry her back to the door to the stairs that would lead them back to their regular lives.

“I didn’t mean it about the politicians,” she said when he put her down at the door step.

Goddamn it but she was close. They had too much heavy clothing on for picking her up to make him uncomfortable but now she was standing there with her hands on his shoulders and a look on her face and it was back: that near compulsion in the back of his mind to pull her in and see what would happen if he kissed her. She smelled good and she really was pretty and she made him laugh and all her attention was on him.

“I’m staff and I have a curfew. If I don’t check in, they’ll worry I’m committing treason or arson or desertion or something. I need to go back,” he said.

“Care of the Tinnaelo, you’re officially a guest, aren’t you? Don’t they refuse to attend events that have staff or do they waive that for humans?” she said.

“While events are going on, yes, I am a guest but after 11pm, no, then I’m just another soldier failing to report for curfew,” he said.

“You’ve got fifteen minutes.”

“And a walk.”

“Would you come to breakfast with me?”

“With you and all the politicians?”

“Shared suffering is our thing. We survived that pre-calc class together. And sixth form English. You were the only reason I didn’t give up on earth education immediately when I had to analyze ancient English connotative language in poetry. Chaucer is stupid. I still don’t understand why you do that to yourselves. Just rewrite it in actual English. You kept me from dying in those classes. Now I’m dying at these meetings. This is the worst kind of diplomacy. Sit with me and keep me from losing my mind.”

“You’ve been doing alright without me so far.”

“No. I’ve been surviving that’s not the same as doing alright,” she said the last two words in a poor imitation of his accent. He did not want to go through the questions that would come with being the Princess’s breakfast guest but then she said, “Please?” and his objections fell apart.

“Where do you want me to meet you?”

“Eight am, in the dining hall in the Forsythe building. I don’t know where that is but you know this place better than I do.”

“I’ll find it.”

“Thank you, I will owe you some favour,” she said and threw her arms around his neck for a hug that he was too startled to return.

Then she was disappearing down the stairs and he was following after her and headed back to the crappier hotel rooms on the edge of resort to check in and attempt to sort out what had just happened before he lost his mind entirely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said on tumblr that this thing was shooting for "fanficcy-est fanfic that I have ever written" so here is 3000+ words of fluff built around a mutual moment of "oh shit they're hot." 
> 
> I didn't intend Star Wars to become a running joke but that's two chapters now so maybe I should just embrace it.


	3. Breakfast and Sneaking Around

It would have been easier if he could have just followed orders and done as he was told. He was good at orders. Orders made everything a little less stressful. It was easier to just do as he was told and let the rest of the world wait but Allura had unsettled his nice easy new job. He had been told to eat in the cafeteria and then report for work at 10:00. By military standards it was a goddamn vacation.

Even when it wasn’t a vacation, the military was easy. Or at least it was simple. Follow orders. Do as your told. Get a shiny badge and a promotion if you do it long enough. Alien princess were not simple.

But Allura had asked him to show up at the Forsythe Hall and so he was there at 7:45 wearing what he hoped was an acceptable shirt and the dress pants from his uniform because he hadn’t brought clothes to wear to not-really-casual breakfasts with dignitaries. He stepped into the dining room and an Altean grabbed him and diverted him to their table. The woman was a stranger who deposited him and sat across from him with a bit of friendly empty conversation about the weather and the decor. Fifteen minutes later the actual delegation arrived and Shiro found himself sitting beside Allura.

“Good morning,” she said cheerfully.

When he had been a kid, sitting beside Allura was second nature. Nothing had changed for her. She treated him as though he was meant to be there and his presence was expected and accepted. Everyone else followed along. Even him. Even though he was searching for an explanation. They had been friends once. But the ten years between the last letter she'd sent and now were impossible to ignore. Well. It was impossible for him to ignore. She didn't seem to have the same issues.

He was introduced as an old friend of hers and was quickly given the names and responsibilities of the people around the table.

There were conversations going on in Altean on both sides of him and he had lost the plot. He was surprised by how easily he could follow it given how long it had been since he’d practiced the weird mix of jumbled verb tenses and nuanced single syllables that could change an entire sentence. It was still difficult to follow intense political conversation and the jokes that made everyone erupt into laughter. He understood the words but that didn’t make mentions of people and events he’d never heard of any easier to understand. She was just as deeply involved in the debate and discussion as the strangers were.

The alien language was leaving him with just a touch of a headache and she kept touching him. Her knee bumped into his, her elbow against his, she told a story about when they were kids and threw an arm around his shoulder as she gestured with the other hand. He might have been able to handle one or other but not both.

"Allura," he started when the conversation let her go for a moment. He was going to run away. He needed to go back and change and he needed a break to recollect his thoughts.

"Don't leave," she whispered. "I know, I know, I do, but please, stay. Just until this brunch is over."

He was sure that he had been capable of saying no to her once upon a time but he’d lost the ability. She turned more of her attention to him. He had been trying to be polite and maybe she hadn’t noticed that he was uncomfortable until he started trying to leave. Now, she pushed the language from Altean to English so that he could follow the conversations more easily, she offered little explanations and tips to try and fill in his moments of confusion. Her attention was still distracting and he was still trying too hard to be polite and it was still too much. It was too much in a way that he was willing to endure.

A man showed up at the table around the time that Shiro was working on his second cup of coffee. He was putting all his attention into the Altean conversation raging around him, celebrating any phrase he understood. Allura had gotten distracted from her attempts to include him and he was trying to sort out his thoughts before she touched him or mentioned his name again and brought all his attention back to her.

The man was human and paused on the other side of the princess to say something polite and charming. People had been doing this all morning. Sometimes he was introduced as well. Sometimes they paused to talk to one of the other Alteans and only paid their respects to her. Shiro might have ignored this visitor if Allura hadn't grabbed his hand and held on tight as she responded.

The conversation was empty. Polite nothingness.

Her hand was under the table cloth where no one could see it and it was tightly clenched around Shiro's good fingers. He rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb and looked up at the stranger that had left her so alarmed. He was human and the kind of person who seemed born for these events. Well polished, with a great smile and a nice suit. When he left, she didn't explain it. She held onto Shiro in all the ways that no one would notice. Her knee leaned into his, she kept hold of his fingers, she lined her arm up with his. They were far closer than they looked as she continued to chat with the rest of the table.

This wasn’t a glancing touch.

He couldn't think straight.

All he could think about was her hand and the way her fingers fit with his.

All he could think about was the slight pressure of her knee against his.

All he could think about was the way that she smelled like something citrusy and alien and familiar.

"I hate meetings," she said sometime later after he had finished that second cup of coffee and they were standing and she wasn’t touching him any more he wasn't quite sure how any of it had happened. Something was wrong. The way she had held onto him in a room full of people was wrong. The way she was smiling a politician’s smile instead of a genuine smile was wrong.

"Call me later, we can watch superhero movies," he said.

That was inane and not the type of thing you said to princesses but she laughed and squeezed his fingers again. The fake smile shifted just a fraction. He didn’t care if it was inane. If it helped smooth out some of the edge to her nerves, then it was worth it. Besides, he was going to spend the rest of the day on whatever shitty patrol was left over once he reported to his commanding officer. The promise of watching movies with her would get him through the rest of the day.

 

His phone buzzed a few hours after dinner and it was like letting a breath he hadn't known he was holding. He’d been late to his assignment and had gotten yelled at in spite of the excuse of being caught up playing guest for the aliens. That had meant two hours of filing as punishment. Lunch had been in a staff cafeteria and the rest of the day had been spent walking around in the woods to make sure that there weren't paparazzi or something worse lurking in the bushes to attack the aliens. He had played at being a guest over dinner but hadn't been anywhere where he'd even been able to see the Altean delegation. He had been waiting for her the entire time.

"Girlfriend or mother?" Lance asked.

Shiro raised an eyebrow.

"Maybe it's my dentist," Shiro said.

"Dentists don't text and no one looks at their phone with that expression for a dentist."

"An expression that says both girlfriend and mother?"

"An expression that says ‘oh shit’ which in my experience is girlfriend or mother or boss but you're already at work so scary woman is most likely."

Shiro laughed at that. He hadn't even opened it but just seeing her name on the screen was enough to make his thoughts fall apart into a collection of, "Oh shit," and "Thank god," that had gotten all tangled up very quickly. Lance nodded as though the laugh confirmed all his theories.

Lance had been trailing him and asking questions about the deep space program for most of the day. It was simultaneously annoying and a bit flattering to have someone treat him like an expert on anything. He had no idea if there was a chance in hell of this kid making deep space. He had made it through combat flight after climbing his way up from the cargo program and that meant he knew how to work his ass off but deep space was hard to get into if you weren't a prodigy. Or you shared a last name with someone who had been a prodigy. Shiro was good but he wasn’t really good enough to be picked from obscurity but he had a famous last name and that had got him noticed. Maybe that was Lance's plan, try and get a recommendation out of Shiro and his famous last name. Or maybe he was just curious.

"I'm going to go answer this," he told Lance.

"Girlfriend. Oh, wait. It’s-" Lance started, lighting up and sitting forward like it was a good scene in a movie.

"No," Shiro cut him off and walked away before Lance could say anything else.

 

Twenty minutes later she had shown up at his room. There were enough extra rooms in this low end corner of the resort that they hadn't needed to double up anyone with a rank. Lance probably had a roommate but Shiro had a single room to himself and it was nicer than any barracks he had stayed in before. It was on the third floor past two check points. Diplomats should not have been able to get in but there was a knock and there she was with a little smile on her face.

He wasn't trying to behave properly anymore and he let himself stare a little. She wore another long loose dress in blue and gold and her hair was pulled back from her face but left to tumble down her back. It might have been a casual look on Altea but she looked like she had stepped off a runway. She was a princess. It shouldn't have been so surprising to see her in gowns but when he thought of her, his imagination still called up images of her at ten, wearing braids, a plaid uniform and white running shoes.

Reconciling that goofy little girl with the powerful woman in front of him was enough to make his head hurt.

"You grew up and got unreasonably tall, I didn’t notice it earlier. Truly unreasonable," she told him instead of saying hello when he opened the door. She readjusted her height so she was taller than he was and gave him a look.

"You look like you grew up and yet, you're still unreasonably annoying," he said because a joke was easier to say than something with weight.

"You missed me."

"Maybe. But only once."

"Let me in before you get in trouble for having me here," she said reaching out to shove him in the chest. He laughed and stepped back. The goofy little girl hadn't gone far even if she looked like a queen. She dropped back to her normal height as she walked past him.

"How did you get in?" he asked as she stepped into the room and looked around.

"I climbed the wall."

"In that dress?" 

She just shrugged and crossed the room to sit down on his bed. She kicked off a pair of very human looking sneakers - which did not answer any of his questions about climbing the walls - and tucked her feet up under her. She was adorable. He sat down beside her and tried to pretend that he hadn't had that thought. It had been years and while she still had all the ease of their childhood friendship, he didn't. She made him uneasy. Not uncomfortable. He didn't want her to leave. He just couldn't find that kick off your shoes comfort that she had.

"Aside from the nearly dying thing, how have you been?" she asked.

"Not bad, my sister got married last year. My mom finally got a university job. My career was going well until the nearly dying thing happened," he said.

"Tell your mom that I say congratulations."

"I'll do that. How have you been?"

It was small talk but she looked away and inhaled slowly before abandoning her answer in a shrug and a wave of her hand. She noticed how worried he looked and launched into a discussion of Altean politics and considerations for returning to university and her father and her little sister. He let it go and watched her talk. She swung between a diplomat's gravity and a silly smile depending on the topic.

"I was promised movies and popcorn," she said.

"You were not promised popcorn," he said.

"I was. It's in the fine print. Humans watch movies and eat popcorn and those horrible little too sweet things that aren't really chocolates. If a human invites you to a movie, it means popcorn."

"Where am I going to get popcorn? We are in the middle of nowhere."

"It's a hotel. They brought me darker dark chocolate just because I asked. They brought me an entire coconut because Coran refused to believe that coconuts are that big. He thought they were hazelnut sized and I wanted to prove him wrong."

"You are a princess. I am not."

"Oh honey, you're pretty like a princess," she said patting his cheek and making him jerk away from her. She laughed and said, "You're telling me that I have to order the popcorn?"

“We’re probably going to have to do without because you can’t call in an order to this room without explaining all kinds of things to all kinds of people and that would definitely ruin movie night,” he said.

She frowned at him gave a dramatic sigh. It was overdone and made him laugh at her. Maybe he could find the ease that she had. She was a princess and a diplomat and her smile made his heart rate change but she was also just Allura and just as obsessed with very specific foods as she had been as a kid. She had spent weeks testing chocolate varieties then there had been a few weeks of anything cherry flavoured, then the difference between bananas themselves and banana flavoured things, then she’d gone through a phase where she discovered how many kinds of potato there were. That she bothered the hotel concierge for specific chocolates and entire coconuts wasn’t surprising to him at all.

She shrugged when he asked her what movie she wanted to watch.

“Stop pouting over popcorn. You’re practically a head of state,” she kicked him and he jumped out of the way before she could hit him, “Help me out here, what kind of movie?”

“Something you liked that I haven’t seen, that’s five years worth of movies for you to choose from,” she said.

As he fussed with the screen, she poked around the hotel room, looking in cabinets and flipping through the bible in the desk drawer then through the room service menu which had a card from the American military in the first page telling him that it wasn’t available for security corps. Shiro watched her out of the corner of his eye as she explored. He chose an action comedy about time travelers because it was the least romantic thing he could think of and he did not want to have anything to fuel his imagination.

She settled in beside him on the tiny sofa and took his good hand in hers and fiddled with his cuff and his fingers as the opening to the film played. He had forgotten what he had chosen. He looked at her and she was watching the screen like she was engrossed in the film. Human – especially American – humour didn’t always translate well to Alteans but Allura liked anything that crossed into absurd so maybe she was enjoying it. He tried to ignore the sensation of her fingers on his but couldn’t do it.

She flipped his hand over and stroked his palm instead. He inhaled and held it for a moment before letting it out slowly so she wouldn't notice how much his composure was costing him. Her leg was lined up with his. When they'd been younger, when she had started to come into her Altean abilities, she had experimented with it in the yard behind his mother's house. She had experimented with lengthening her limbs and changing her hair colour or the shape of her nose while he'd laughed at her. They'd been about eleven. He turned his thoughts to trying to figure out if that was what she was doing now. She was probably just slouched down far enough to make up their height difference. She was only a little shorter than he was. If he let himself admit it, he was just searching for distractions.

"Kashi?" she said.

He looked down at her. Her face was turned up to look at him but her expression was guarded. The movie was still playing but her expression said that she was paying as much attention to it as he was.

"Lur?" he said.

"No one calls me that."

"No one ever called me Kashi but you. If you want to keep using it, then I get to drag some old nickname out of the past too."

“You have never called me Lur.”

“Well, maybe I should start.”

"So what should I call you instead? What do your friends call you?" she asked.

_Is that what we are? Is that what this was?_ He pushed those thoughts out of the way, he was going to say or do something inappropriate if he let himself follow those thoughts to their inevitable conclusion.

"You can call me Kashi or whatever you want," he said.

"I don't like Lur so if calling you by your real name is what it takes to avoid being Lur, then I'll do it."

"What if I call you Allie?"

"Allie sounds like a name that belongs to a twelve year old with blonde hair and braces."

"Rah?"

That made her laugh. She turned into him and buried the laugh in his shoulder. A moment later, she pulled herself up to sit beside him and give him a mock glare. He immediately missed the contact. He was too cold when she was so far away. She was still holding onto his hand and for the first time he grabbed her back, curling his fingers around hers and holding her so it would be harder for her to run away from him. Once he realized that thought had crossed his mind, he started to let go. She didn’t let him. She had wrapped her other hand around his and he held her just as tightly.

"Don't call me Rah," she said.

Oh. He was making jokes about nicknames. He'd forgotten everything but the touch and her smile again.

"Should I be official? Should I bow and call you Princess?"

"Ugh. No. Here with you is the last place I have left where no one bows or calls me by a title. Don't you dare call me Princess," she said.

"Whatever you want, Princess," he said.

"Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Call me that."

He bowed his head but before he could say anything she shoved him hard in the shoulder. She was stronger than he was. She had always been stronger than he was and he'd always been dumb enough to try and fight her. He still had a hold of her other hand and pulled her forward as he lost his balance. She tried to catch herself on the back of the sofa but he had weight and surprise on his side. Just because she was stronger, did not meant that he wasn't bigger. He let the shove become a fall and pulled her back onto the sofa with him.

"Don't be an ass, Kashi" she said.

"Shut up, Rah," he said.

She sprawled out over him. It was a nice hotel room, with a good size sofa. He could lie down on it. He let go of her and reached for a pillow as she started to pull away. She sat up over him, some comeback on her lips and he hit her in the face. She yelled something at him and tried to grab the pillow before he could do it again. He was only going to be faster than her once and he used it to grab her wrist and force her to lose her balance so he could roll them both onto the floor and flip her onto her back.

They hadn't landed before he knew that it was a very bad idea.

She squirmed but didn't try to push him off. She had taken the pillow from him and hit him in the face with it before all the reasons hit him. There were a lot of reasons why pinning her to the floor was an exceptionally bad idea. He had his knees on either side of her hips thankfully that was the only one that had time to register before he was fighting with her for the pillow to keep her from hitting him again. She hit hard, especially when she had a weapon that she didn't think would hurt him.

His element of surprise was gone. She was faster and stronger and he was going to lose. Without consciously deciding too, he buried his face in her shoulder so she couldn't hit him without hitting herself too. She didn’t aim for his face but even with all that Altean strength behind it, she didn’t have a good enough angle to hurt him with the pillow against his shoulder or back. She was laughing and calling him names.

He turned his face into her shoulder. He had been trying to pull away from an angle she’d found where she could hit him. Now he had his cheek against her throat.

This was a worse idea than flipping her onto the floor had been. 

Had he always been in love with her?

Was it new?

Was it because she didn't make a big deal about the arm or the discharge?

Was it just because she had grown up to be ridiculously beautiful?

Where had this come from?

Why was it suddenly so much more than he could take?

He started to pull away to try and remember his own name and how to breathe normally and why she was not remotely attainable. Getting hit in the face was better than where these thoughts were going. He needed distance and space to breathe.

"Stay there for a second," she said.

She had grabbed his shirt and he couldn't get up. He froze and nearly panicked.

"Not like that," she said, "Like you were a minute ago."

Confusion hit him like a freight train. What did she want? Why hadn't she let go? Did he want her to? He couldn't clear his head. It lasted a moment and then she was letting go of him and pushing him up so she could slide away from him. Relief and disappointment washed over him at the distance. He rearranged himself, sitting up and crossing his feet and trying to find something that approached clarity of thought. He ran his fingers through his hair and bit his tongue hard enough to hurt in hopes that it would shake him out of it.

"Sorry," she said.

"You're sorry? I definitely started that. I'm sorry," he said.

“I’m going to go back.”

Of course, she was. Fuck.

“Are you going to climb back down the wall?” he asked but the joke didn’t quite come out as a joke.

“Yes,” she said.

“Come on,” he said.

He pushed himself up and held out a hand to her. She let him pull her to her feet and she shook out her hair and the dress. He checked the hall as she put back on her shoes. It was like being a teenager and sneaking around, trying to keep secrets from his mother. Except in that analogy, his mother was the American military and the government of one of the most powerful planets in the galaxy. The sneaking around was ridiculous. People had to know. Allura’s people at least had to know where she was or they would have come looking for her. Still, having to stop and talk to someone else, to explain or justify was not something he wanted to deal with.

He led her through the quiet halls to the staff elevator. The cleaning staff were on a skeleton crew until the conference was over. There was no night staff in the military floors. They stepped into a little room with laundry carts lined up neatly and boxes of mini toiletries on a metal shelf. A poster nearby reminded to be aware of workplace accidents and to always follow WHMIS procedures.

Shiro had come back after the crash with claustrophobia issues. Being trapped anywhere set his teeth on edge, even if it was just an elevator or a bathroom. Knowing how to get out of a place helped. He had figured out the exits and how to open them the first night he’d been there. He’d gone so far as talking one of the hotel staff into telling him the code for the service elevator. He had not intended to use that knowledge to sneak a girl out. He’d promised the exact opposite in fact.

“You know where every security camera is and all the building codes?” she asked.

“Not everything,” he said.

“Are you planning on robbing the place?”

“One never knows when one might need to sneak an alien space princess out the back door.”

“Oh, so this happens often?”

“Of course it does.”

She laughed and leaned her head on his shoulder as they waited for the elevator to grind it’s way up to the third floor. He closed his eyes and waited. She didn’t move away from him and they didn’t talk about it. When it finally arrived, she stepped into the elevator and disappeared behind the sliding doors. He went back to his room to sit and watch the rest of the movie by himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on Shiro's "the military was simple" thing, I think he'd feel differently after he'd been through combat situations. Canon Shiro after a few missions would not say the same thing but in this AU, he's not had to deal with combat or any sort of war. I hold with the headcanon that Shiro likes simple and direct and orders and rank make everything very simple and very direct. That said, I don't think that Shiro would be able to go back to being an orders-following cog in the military if he ever makes it back to Earth in canon. 
> 
> Also Allura playing with her shapeshifting abilities or using them almost subconsciously makes me happy too. I'll be a little taller today. This dress would look better if my boobs were a little smaller/larger, I'll just change them. Wouldn't it be convenient?
> 
> More headcanons: Allura and food: We pretty much only see the Alteans eating food goo even though they have entire kitchens on their ship. Also Coran and Allura never complain about the food. My theory is that Altea doesn't have a lot of food culture. They've got storms that drop flaming rocks so while they have a growing period and lots of flowering plants, flaming rock storms would destroy the vegetation. So their food is pretty damn simple because they grow things that produce a lot in short time periods, harvest it before the storms come and then enhance it with tech to add in any missing vitamins or nutrients. There isn't a lot of food variety and perhaps they have less of a sense of taste/smell than humans do so while they can participate in food based cultural events, it's not a big deal to them. It's not something that Alteans do at home. 
> 
> So Allura's childhood obsession with food and food varieties is about exploring culture through food. All her human friends really cared about food and her Altean friends just ate to fuel their bodies so she got really fascinated by that difference. All human cultures are big on food as ritual and bonding and we are big on nuances in food and varieties of food. Humans and food is fascinating. 
> 
> Author's notes are for headcanons now. 
> 
> With this update, I've run out my lead on this story. I have two partial chapters and an outline complete but we're probably looking at a good week between now and the next update. (I have now jinxed it, haven't I?)


	4. Business as Usual

 

The sense memory clung. Her close and laughing as he rolled her over. Her thighs around his hips. The smell of her. The way her hair had felt on his face when he'd gotten close to her. It was all jumbled together in his head and it wasn't leaving him alone. He was at a regular breakfast hall. Eating plain regular cereal. Surrounded by regular people. Trying to remember how he ever behaved in his regular life.

"How was the sex?" Lance asked.

Shiro turned slowly to look at him.

Lance was smiling like it was a joke. He probably thought it was a joke but it crested. There was too much all at once and all on top of the last year of scattered memories and doctor's visits and feeling like he had lost entire pieces of the person he had once been. Allura was more than he could handle all on her own without having a peanut gallery cadet offering commentary on how atrociously it was all going. Shiro should have walked away but instead he opened his mouth and the truth fell out.

"No," he said flatly. He saw the shift in Lance's face as soon as the tone registered. Shiro was already talking and it was like something had cracked and now that he had started, he needed it said or it was going to build up until he truly did explode. "There hasn't been any sex and there won't be any sex. There won't be any anything. Ever. And I hate it. Even if she weren't from another planet, even if she weren't a princess, even if I wasn't-" he cut himself off. "It will never be anything but she smiles at me and it feels like coming home. Stop asking. Assume the answer is 'no.'"

"Sorr-" Lance started.

Shiro held up a hand and he fell blessedly silent as they continued eating. Shiro had kept his voice quiet enough that he was very sure that no one but Lance had heard him. He felt bad for it as soon as the annoyance had passed and it passed quickly. Lance had fallen quiet for the rest of the meal, he didn’t quite get up and leave but it seemed like he wanted to. When he finally did get up and walk away, Shiro felt immediately worse.

“Wait a moment,” he said falling into step. “I apologize for being an asshole.”

“Sorry, I pushed,” Lance said.

“I’ve got a cousin who’s making a run at Deep Space too. I can send you his details, maybe you can help each other through the applications and the prep simulators,” Shiro said. It felt like a peace offering. Keith would kill him. Keith did not like other people. Still, Keith needed to start making friends if he was going to survive as a pilot. Pilots worked on crews and Keith wasn’t good at crews. This guy was obviously very good at crews. They’d probably hate each other.

“That’d be awesome. Are the sims hard? I’ve heard the sims are harder than anything you actually have to do in training,” Lance said and then he was off on a run of questions again and Shiro was able to let some of his guilt for blowing up go by the time they split ways. Shiro was headed back to the front lines of alien diplomacy while Lance was grumbling about a shift in the comms center that he thought he was overqualified for. Shiro might have offered to trade but there was a small chance that he’d get to see Allura from a distance where he was going and he wasn’t willing to give that up.

There was some kind of summit meeting happening and they needed security posted around the room. Shiro picked up a folder and was sat down near a general from a country that he’d never visited. He was UN which made it just plausible enough for him to be working as an aide. He was wearing a suit and jacket with the insignia on it. He was theoretically there to take notes. A lower ranked military officer, collecting details. He was also armed and had been trained on how to scan the room without looking like he was scanning the room.

They were seated down the table from the Tinnealo delegation so he wasn’t being observed by anyone who really needed fooling. Allura was not at the meeting. Coran was, as were some of the other Alteans he had met at breakfast. They greeted him as a friend and he smiled back at them. 

There was no trace of Allura for the rest of the day.

 

The next day followed much the same pattern but he had the morning off and spent it in a far too busy fitness center in the basement of the hotel where his room was. Military types spent too much time at the gym but he still had enough scar tissues and injuries that going too long between proper physio appointments could set him back to barely being able to move his shoulder.

The next day followed much the same pattern but he had the morning off and spent it in a far too busy fitness center in the basement of the hotel where his room was. Military types spent too much time at the gym but he still had enough scar tissues and injuries that going too long between proper physio appointments could set him back to barely being able to move his shoulder. Even without a trained therapist there to stand over his shoulder and judge his form, he knew the exercises by rote and could probably do them in his sleep.

The rest of the day was spent in walk-throughs and training for the event to be held that evening. Another social event. Shiro knew that he wasn't getting sent to most of the meetings and that there would be hundreds more small meetings occurring between individual delegations but it still felt like there were a lot of social events for such a short summit.

This one was a dinner and dance hosted by the Yorilians. They were one of Earth's nearest geographic neighbours but their planet was largely uninhabitable to most species with aerobic cellular function. Oxygen didn't bother them but they also didn't need the oxygen. So the humans had agreed to let them host an event as part of the summit. Shiro couldn't tell the difference.  Everything was decorated much the same as it had been for the first banquet, there were just going to be more speeches by the Yorilians than the humans this time.

"The Alteans won't be a problem but if you need to deal with them directly over anything more involved than coffee, start with Shirogane, he'll be on the floor. He'll escalate what needs escalates and deal with what can be managed in the moment," the ranking officer was saying. That was news. Shiro looked up at her but she kept going, offering other suggestions and tips to the various security corps members on the floor. She went over who else was considered an expert on other species and some blanket reminders about courtesy.

"I'm hardly an Altean expert the way that Odoki is a Tinnealo expert," he said to the officer quietly.

"You've been there," she said simply.

"I was nine at the time. It was basically a school trip," he said.

"The list of people who have been to that planet could fit on a single piece of paper. You can speak their language and their occasional inability to maintain formality does not bother you. No one is an expert on Alteans, you're the best we've got. You're probably the best that anyone has got. If you want to stay on in diplomatic corps once this is all over, I will give you a referral based on your conduct in the last four days alone," she said.

Shiro blinked at her and took a minute to process what she had just said. She was about forty, wore her dark hair short and neat and said all of that as though it wasn't a compliment or worth mentioning. She was United Nations as well though not from one of the space or air force branches that he was familiar with. He recognized the insignia but couldn't remember which department it came from. She stood with her clipboard in hand and while she made eye contact as she spoke, she seemed to be calculating multiple things in her mind.

"Most of those soldiers have basic xeno-training and that's it. I've never had a conversation with an Altean in my life, neither has anyone else. You're our best resource on the floor. Try not to start a war," she said.

"Yes, Ma'am," he said.

She walked away to go talk to someone else and it was hard to say from a distance if she was scolding them or offering them a job as well. Shiro walked back to his group to finish the tour of the entrances and exits while feeling a little disoriented by the conversation.

The comment meant that after the event started, he spent a lot of time fielding questions about Altea. And he knew the answers. Each time someone stopped him, he was sure that this time he was going to make a fool of himself but each time the questions and answers were simple and easy.

A server found him and asked him about food. Alteans didn't care as long as it wasn't meat. That had to be in the basic xeno-training, didn’t it? The server had looked relieved by the answer though. Someone found him and asked about whether he could arrange a meeting with the princess. He told them he couldn’t. He might have been able to but there was no way that he was going to try on behalf of some mid-rank officer from France.  

Someone had observed a pair of Alteans dancing in the hallway and laughing their asses off and couldn't figure out what was going on.

"It looked like they were doing the macarena," he said.

"And?"

"I just wasn't sure how to approach them."

"Did you approach them?"

"No."

"Then does it matter?" Shiro asked.

"But what were they doing?"

"It probably was the Macarena,” Shiro said with a laugh. The soldier stared at him blankly so he tried to explain, “Coran tells his people to use youtube to look up things about humans before interacting so they aren't surprised. They probably looked up dance steps or something and found the Macarena and thought it was ridiculous. You can go back and offer to teach them the Funky Chicken and they'd probably think that was funny too.”

A slow blink from the soldier in front of him.

"I'm serious," he said. "A lot of alien species take these summits very seriously but for the Alteans, this is basically a vacation in an exotic location. If every species in this room cut ties with them, their economy wouldn't even feel the loss and their national security is even more secure. They're polite and respectful but they also think most elements of Earth culture are either fascinating or ridiculous, sometimes both."

"I'm not going to teach foreign delegates how do dance the funky chicken," he said.

"I know but just don't freak out so much. They're not as stressed out as you are. They take the meetings seriously but the parties are just for fun. The Alteans are actually relaxing and having a good time while the rest of us obsess over diplomatic ties,” he said.

That was probably not exactly true but it was close. The Alteans were the least likely group to be offended. Shiro knew that that was because of Coran and Allura and not because of any particular detail of Altean culture. Nothing offended Coran. He either set about trying to solve a problem caused by a misunderstanding or he just laughed about it. Allura got offended but put the requirements of diplomacy ahead of her offense. The rest of the delegation just followed suit. They sent back the chicken parmigiana but they didn’t complain about it.

Being the local expert on the Alteans took up most of his evening. He didn’t have to spend as much time pretending to be busy because he was truly busy. It was a nice change. It wasn’t a bad feeling, to be sought out for advice and to be able to give advice that was helpful and useful.

It was also a distraction from the lack of Allura. She was there. She was there in the room, he caught the sound her laugh a few times and saw her dancing with the same blonde she’d spoken to when she’d brought Shiro to breakfast. He didn’t seek her out. He wanted to. Every time he found himself having a conversation with an Altean, he wanted to a little bit more but he didn’t. She was in the same room but that wasn’t the same thing as being with her.

They had been friends once but this was not the place for spending time with your childhood friends. Especially not when your childhood friends were visiting dignitaries from other planets. Maybe he was being rude to not go and say hello but he was still too wrapped up in wanting things he couldn’t have. Talking to her would just make his head hurt.

The one time he made eye contact with her, he gave her a smile and she didn’t return it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think the macarena joke is off tone but I thought it was too funny to cut. So now it's here. 
> 
> Coran would totally tell diplomats to use the internet to look up human customs. I use the internet to look up human customs. 
> 
> I know I had declared this fic dead but I'd written this sex scene for it that was just all wrong and I'd started to hate the story because I couldn't make it work. But it wasn't the story. It was that scene. So I cut that, dialed back to where chapter 3 left off and went back to the pining and world-building elements and remembered why I loved this story.
> 
> Also I know this cuts a little awkwardly but the next chunk is 4000 words and not done yet so it really needs its own chapter. I was going to do it as one chapter but then it would end up being a 10 000 word chapter. Also let's build the angst a little.


	5. Misunderstandings

The evening was starting to drag. Shiro was not really designed for parties. They were full of movement and required attention and yet nothing ever happened. The left him feeling like he had done nothing and far too much all at once. The distraction of being the one they came too with the questions about the Alteans only worked so far to distract him from the boredom and tedium of all the people and worrying about whether he was drinking his coffee properly or if he was going to embarrass himself with the wrong fork.

Dinner was over and while dancing and drinks were still happening, it felt like the evening should have been ending. Shiro stood with a group of ambassadors who all had United Nations ties and had adopted him into their circle because of the uniform. He wasn’t an ambassador and most of their conversations hadn’t made much sense but it was better than standing alone. He found himself missing Lance’s droning questions about deep space, at least he was honest in his enthusiasm. The conversation about economic models was not nearly as interesting.

His gaze wandered. Everyone wore their finery and that made for a wide mix of fabrics and colours across the space. The Galra chose dark blues and purples but they were the only group that approached the human tendency to consider black suits as stylish. Even the human women who wore ballgowns chose dresses in a single colour. The riot of colours on each Rellian was something altogether different. It made these gatherings beautiful and visually chaotic. Shiro was bored enough to be giving a lot of thought to this. 

He was still considering fashion choices when Coran had appeared at his side.

“Are you really an expert on us now?”

“Do you have spies?” Shiro asked.

“Of course we do but that’s hardly necessary for humans. Your people like to talk,” Coran said.

“Pot, kettle,” Shiro said.

“What’s that?”

“It’s an old saying, ‘The pot calls the kettle black,’ it means you aren’t any better.”

Coran laughed. His hair was brushed back in the same way that it always was. He had to be older than he had been when Shiro was ten but he didn’t look any different. He even wore the same blue and gold uniform he always wore. The handful of times that Shiro had ever seen him wearing something else were few and far between. Once he had volunteered at the school for a summer fair event and had worn a Hawaiian shirt and a pair of shorts and that day still stuck in Shiro’s mind as one of the most hilarious things he had ever seen.

Coran started to walk and Shiro hesitated for a moment before following him. Who just wandered off in the middle of a conversation? Coran was still talking and Shiro had to hurry to catch up with him.

“I am considering having some of my more serious looking staff members ask your wait staff utterly ridiculous questions just so that the wait staff will have to come ask you to explain nonsense.”

“If the Macarena thing wasn’t orchestrated, trust me when I say that you won’t be able to top it no matter how hard you try,” Shiro said.

“I am disappointed to say that it wasn’t.”

“Too bad, it was gold.”

“I’ve missed this planet,” Coran said.

From everything that Shiro had heard, the ambassador who had replaced him after he’d moved back to Altea with Allura did not like Earth. The newspapers liked to say that no Alteans did. That part of the problem with the space witches was that they couldn’t adapt to other planets and never stayed long enough to get to know the culture. Allura was the first Altean royal to spend more than a few weeks off the planet. Coran was even more unusual than Allura because he had left Altea as an adult and had never been caught complaining about it by his own media or Earth’s.

He genuinely meant it when he said he liked Earth.

“Are you leaving after the summit?” Shiro asked.

“Me? Yes. Well, I’m going to spend a few days in London first. I haven’t seen an orchestra in far too long but it will be just a short vacation before I head back again.”

Shiro raised his eyebrows. Something in Coran’s expression said that he was waiting for a follow up question. Shiro didn’t ask. He was probably better off not knowing but Coran wanted to tell him and was waiting very patiently. Just about anyone else, Shiro would have been able to wait out but Coran made him feel like a little kid with just a look. Talking to Coran was worse than talking to his own mother. He held out a little longer before caving. 

“You’re going to tell me all about it whether I ask or not, aren’t you?” he said.

“I was planning to find the contact information for some of her friends from high school to help her get resettled but she looked so pleased to see you that first night,” Coran said. He considered Shiro’s expression and then dropped whatever he was going to say on the subject. Shiro was pretty sure that his expression was polite and empty but maybe Coran was better at reading people than average. Maybe polite and empty was enough of a message.

“She wanted to complete her degree. She has two years of study left to finish. She’ll be headed back to Oxford for it. Is your family still in England?”

Coran was fishing for but he was fishing for something. Shiro had no idea what to make of it.

“Arizona. My mother finally got a post at a university.”

“I see.”

Coran had guided them back around the edges of the party as they’d talked until they were standing by the Altean table. There were only ten Alteans which made them one of the smallest delegations at the event and it meant that Shiro recognized them all. He ended up sitting beside the same woman he had sat near at the breakfast that Allura had dragged him to and she spent the next twenty minutes trying to explain some Altean joke to him which turned into a lecture on how little Altean history he knew.

By the time Allura had appeared, he was being quizzed on things that he could barely define.

“Aren’t you supposed to be an expert. You don’t know about the Junip treaties?” the woman beside him, Dira, asked pointing at him with her glass. She wore purple and green, a color combination that shouldn’t have worked but she somehow managed to pull off. Her brown hair was styled a bob of curls and she had orange marks on her face that curled along her cheek bones and really didn't go with the dress. She carried herself with such confidence that it didn't matter. 

“I am not the one who claimed to be an Altean expert. Why would I know that? I’m a pilot not a politician. I don’t even know much about the Martian treaties and my planet signed those,” he said.

“Are you torturing humans with political trivia?” Allura’s voice was behind him.

Dira spun in her chair, “Did you hear that the other humans claim that he’s an expert on Altean matters? He doesn't even know where the Junip treaties were signed.”

Shiro twisted with her to look up at the princess who was standing with the human man that he had met with her briefly once before. Tall and blonde and wearing an expensive black suit. He was watching Allura as she laughed at Dira who was still using her wine glass like she was a teacher and it was a pointer.

“How many nations are on Earth, Dira?” Allura asked.

“Nations?”

Shiro laughed and she gave him a mock glare and started gesturing with the wine glass again. Allura cut her off before she could continue arguing.

“Stop being superior,” Allura said reaching out to take the wine glass away, “And stop drinking intoxicating things that you can’t identify.”

“ _I like the intoxicating things they serve. That one is fizzy. I’m not a princess. I am allowed a little bit of intoxication now and again. Besides, he’s cute and I never get a chance to tease aliens,_ ” Dira switched to Altean to talk to Allura.

“ _This be my planet, you alien_ ,” Shiro said. His Altean was shaky. He knew he’d gotten the verb wrong but her expression was worth it. Allura laughed as did half the table. Not all of them spoke English and Dira had been showing off her English as much as she had been teasing him. He wasn’t sure how young she was but she was the only other one there who approached Allura’s age. She took the teasing with grace. He liked her more that she didn’t take the table turning on her as a personal offense.

" _It's time to end the picking on Dira show for the evening_ ," Dira said. She was still turned backwards to talk to Allura and the man who stood beside her, looking lost in the language. Dira switched back to English and pointed at him, "Joshua, come sit down so I can tease you instead," she pointed at Shiro and said, "This one isn't any fun anymore."

"Dira," Allura said.

"I'm being sociable," she said.

"You're drunk."

"Drunk," Dira repeated thoughtfully as though she hadn't heard the word before. She probably hadn't. Her accent was thicker than Allura's, she had probably learned English in a grammar classroom rather than by talking to people who spoke the language.

"You are inebriated," Allura said in Altean.

"Perhaps. Joshua, do you think I'm embarrassing my planet and my people? Come sit down with me," Dira asked.

Allura rolled her eyes and came around the table to sit across from them. Shiro cracked a smile at her and she returned it. Maybe the other night hadn't made such a mess of everything after all. Joshua sat down beside her. He had been introduced to Shiro earlier in the week but Shiro hadn't registered the details. He had met so many people that another diplomat in a suit without a rank attached hadn't seemed worth remembering. He was American judging by the accent, rich judging by the suit and important enough to qualify for an invite to an interplanetary summit.

Shiro wasn't quite sure why he had been invited to the table but he was even less sure what Joshua had done to merit an invitation. The usual Altean exclusivity seemed to be paused. There was a Clexian sitting farther down the table speaking Galactic Common to a group of Alteans and Shiro had seen one of the older ambassadors sitting with a Estrik delegation. It was either Allura's doing or Coran's, possibly the two of them had sat down and planned ways to push the delegation to spend more time talking to other species. 

Shiro was not a politician. He could think his way through an emergency but he wasn't quite as good at this kind of dealing with people. Nearly everyone at the table was a stranger, he didn't really belong among them, and Allura was throwing him off just by being there. She didn't seem bothered. He was undoubtedly reading things into their little movie night that hadn't happened. He drifted in and out of the conversation. It was mostly Dira quizzing Joshua on human things and studying him as he answered like he was saying for more important things.

"I don't understand why you organize your family groups in such small units," Dira said.

"How else would you organize a family if it wasn't a family?" Joshua said.

"I think I'd get bored and lonely if the only person who lived in my house was my yesha. Do you have very small houses? Is that why?"

"I don't know. Isn't it weird to have other people in your house? It would be like having roommates for your entire life. There's something nice about having your own space."

"Something lonely and," Dira trailed off and turned to Allura for a translation and they argued back and forth about the right word until she chose, "Anti-social about living alone. I'd be so sad, all the time. What if you had more than one child? Don't humans have lots of children? Isn't it tedious to care for them with only two adults living in the household? What if your yesha dies? Do you have to raise them yourself? Alone? What's the human word for yesha?"

"The English word is spouse," Shiro said. 

"Right. Yes. Spouse. Dead spouse and no one to help take care of your children? I read once that humans can have six children. That you sometimes have two or three at one time. Is that true. Three at once?"

Joshua was running out of answers and patience for her.

"We don't have illia but that doesn't mean we never leave our homes or speak to other people. It's just a little less formal and organized. My aunts helped raise me after my mom died. My sister is godmother to her best friend's kids and spends a lot of time with them. You make it sound like we never speak to anyone but the people we're married to," Shiro said. "How many humans do you know?"

Dira switched back to Altean again to answer him and he only caught some of it but it was enough to make it clear that she had never spoken to a human before the summit. She made a bit of a show of thinking hard and then pointing at him and Joshua and ticking them off on her fingers.

"Where did you learn to speak Altean?" Joshua asked him as though grabbing for a lifeline to pull himself out of the conversation with Dira. "I looked into alien language classes and could only really find Galactic Common and a few places that gave lessons in Yorilian or Estrik. I didn't think there were any humans who spoke it."

"I don't count," Shiro said. "I speak about as well as a toddler."

"You understand her."

"Some of it."

"No one understands her," Allura cut in, "Don't worry about that."

" _I'm offended,_ " Dira said in Altean. " _I'm going to go get more fizzy inebriation water to sooth my offended nerves_."

" _No, you're not. You are not starting an interplanetary incident because you fell down a flight of stairs,_ " Allura said then switched back to English. "Ka- Shiro and I went to the same school when we were younger. Our entire primary class had Altean lessons. My tutor came into the school to do it three times a week. It was all part of the cultural exchange programs back then. I'm hoping we'll be able to reinstitute and expand our cultural exchange to include language classes and a better understanding moving forward."

Shiro did not ask her if she had practiced that. It sounded like the kind of talking point that might come up in an interview. Of course, she would have prepared talking points. If she was moving back to finish her degree, it wasn't just about the courses. A royal didn't move halfway across the galaxy just to take a few classes. It was a part of a political strategy of some kind. He wanted to ask her about it but it didn't seem like the right thing to bring up at the table surrounded by people.

Dira's complete lack of professionalism was easing Shiro's awkwardness. If she could wave wine glasses around and still be taken seriously, he could probably afford to make a few etiquette missteps without offending everyone. He didn't have to try as hard to be proper when she was being so dramatic about the news that triplets existed. 

Down the table, a few of the older diplomats were giving her looks of disdain but she was ignoring them effortlessly. The line between treating Allura like a friend and treating Allura like a princess was easier to manage with Dira sitting there beside him talking about 'fizzy inebriation water' and grinning at everyone. It was also easier to put his overactive imagination away and stop thinking of Allura as anything but a princess and an old friend.

"I have forgotten a lot of Altean even after years of classes at school," Shiro admitted.

"Your grammar is very bad," Dira said in English.

"Thanks," Shiro said. "My vocabulary is awful too."

" _I am sending you back to Altea with Erin and Janil, you're a terror,_ " Allura hissed in Altean.

" _Then who will tutor the pretty human boys on how to speak Altean?"_ Dira asked.

" _I sit right here_ ," Shiro said. The verb still wasn't right but he couldn't remember how conjugation worked.

Dira reached out and patted the side of his face. He leaned away from her but couldn't keep from laughing as she said, " _Yes and you're very pretty, scar and all._ "

"Your friends are fun," he said to Allura.

"Just her."

"Allura, go away. You take her away," Dira said to Shiro. "I am going to teach the nice one how to say something proper in Altean. You and your bad grammar go dance or eat or something."

Shiro looked across the table at the princess. He was still laughing at Dira who was poking him in the shoulder and making shooing gestures. Allura stood up gracefully and paused to say something to Joshua before coming around the table towards him. The rest of the room had fallen away as he'd been sitting there and he was surprised to look up and find that the party was starting to finally wind down. Yorilians didn't have final remarks or any traditions involving leaving after dinner so the party was hardly over but there were empty spots at the tables as various delegations had given up on a formal end to the event and just left.

It still a busy room but many of the aliens had drifted back together to speak in their own languages about their own affairs. The Yorilians were still having fun and likely would be until near dawn. Shiro wondered if he would be expected to stay on shift until everyone left. Looking around, he could see a lot of idle humans who were probably wondering the same thing.

"I can see what direction we're going and you should probably be warned that I don't know how to dance," he said.

" _I'm not expecting anything fancy,_ " Allura said in Altean.

" _I can't do no fancy, not fancy,_ " he said. Whatever the word for simple was, he didn't know it.

" _Then you'll have to lear_ n," she said.

He was as bad as predicted. It wasn't a formal dance with expected steps but he kept tripping her up by putting his feet in the wrong place anyways. She wasn't close by dancing standards - a couple drifted by them that were touching in about all the ways you could be touching and still be standing up - but she was close enough to be a distraction. He tried to keep his thoughts on the conversation and his feet but when the conversation dropped away, he was back to thinking about her in ways he really shouldn't have. 

"You always wear your hair up to these things," he said.

"It makes me look older," she said. "Is it starting to fall? Does it look bad?"

"No, it looks perfect. You're beautiful. Its just weird because I always remember you in braids or with your hair all over the place and in all the pictures after you moved away, you always looked so polished."

Like you had become someone else.

He cut that thought off before it could escape from his mouth. That was not what he wanted to say to her. Why had he started the conversation in the first place? It was an inane thing to say. He hadn't wanted to talk politics or economics and the quiet between them and the music and the din of chatter in the rest of the party wasn't enough to keep him distracted. Talking had seemed like a better idea until he had tried it.

"Little kids can get away with hair that is all over the place but princesses can't."

"Do you ever wish you weren't?" he asked quietly.

"Weren't?"

"Never mind." It hadn't been an appropriate comment.

"Sometimes," she said as though he hadn’t tried to brush the topic away, "More often, I'm grateful."

"I glad to hear that," he said and he meant it. It might have been easier on him if it she was just the little girl he remembered sharing all those days with, but it was a relief to know that she was happy with who she was. The silence was back but he wasn't stupid enough to break it a second time. The song ended and he made up an excuse to escape being brought back to the Altean table. Allura took his hand in both of hers before he could run away.

"Don't leave me alone with the them. Your superior officer will be lenient if you're involved with a delegation. You know they won't mind," she said.

"You are more than capable of handling them," he said.

"I know but I don't want to do it alone."

"Allura," he started but couldn't assemble the words to say what he wanted to say. 

She held his gaze and then dropped his hand with a nod that he didn't quite understand. He wasn't sure what he had been going to say when he'd said her name. The expression on her face knocked whatever thought it was right out of his head. She didn't say anything else. Her smile was polite and a bit sad as she turned in a swish of skirts and walked away. 

He was left to stare after her and question all his life's choices. She had looked at him like he'd broke her heart and he hadn't even managed to get the words out to apologize. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dira is right up there on my list of favourite OCs. 
> 
> I'm also really enjoying writing Shiro and Coran's dynamic in this story. They're fond of each other but also still figuring out how to interact. 
> 
> Once I get attached to back story, it sticks for a character. So in this chapter we mention both that Shiro's mom lives in Arizona and that Shiro's mom is dead. Shiro has two moms in my head. You can find their backstory in [this chapter of Places We Call Home](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9635459/chapters/22493633) if you want it but it doesn't factor into the plot of this story so I don't bother to explain it in the flow of the story. 
> 
> I'm going a little hard on the fanfic-angst here but you know what, I can do what I want because it's a goddamn fanfic.


	6. We Can Be Us

She woke him up in the middle of the night by breaking into his room. The sound of the door and footsteps hadn’t been enough to wake him but the tap on his shoulder woke him with a spike of adrenaline. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone there. He had been dreaming and the dream left him defensive and on edge for reasons he couldn’t think clearly enough to make sense of. He came up swinging one hand while panicking about the fact that he only had one available.

“Kashi!” she yelled and grabbed his wrist hard enough to hurt.

"What the hell?" he said.

She lit up a ball of pink light that glowed in her hand. Oh. He met her gaze. Pink glow on white hair turned it to a cotton candy cloud. The light didn’t help with the disorientation. It lit her face in a pink wash that made her look unearthly. But it was Allura and with that realization, his panic receded as fast as it had come. He sat up straighter and pulled back from her and the glow to try and sort out his thoughts.

She fiddled with the magic ball of light, her attention dropping to it and then skating back up to look at him again. It spun in a tight circle in her palm. It was mesmerizing. He stared down at it until the edges of the dream had faded away and he could make sense of what was happening. The moving light was picking up the glitter on her dress. It looked like she was still wearing the gown from the party.

“What the hell, Allura?” he said again.

"I know that you told me to leave you alone but I need you to be my friend, just one more time. Then I'll leave you be and you won’t have to deal with me or all my alien friends and the politics and the people asking annoying questions. You can go back to your life and I'll go back to mine but can we be us again, one last time?"

"We can be us forever," he said.

Then he realized where they were and asked, "How did you get into my room?"

"The same way I keep getting into this building."

"Which is?"

She shrugged with a little smirk

He sat up and pushed his hair back out of his eyes with one hand. He only had one hand. That was still surprising. Every time he woke up, there was a moment where he forgot that his one arm ended above the elbow. Maybe he would never get used to it. He was also not properly dressed and there was a princess sitting on the edge of a chair beside his bed talking about not being friends any more and staring at him. The arm could wait.

"You've got scars," she said.

"Yeah. Can you toss me a shirt? I think I left one on the chair you're sitting on," he said.

She looked startled by the request but reached around behind her and found a black t-shirt. His suit was draped over the back of the sofa and he'd left his shoes on the floor. He'd at least fallen asleep wearing track pants and not something more embarrassing. The clock said that it was four in the morning. He didn't have to report for duty until eleven am but he had still been hoping for more than two hours of sleep. He gracelessly pulled the shirt on. Even after a year, it was still not easy without a second hand but he was getting better at it. His eyes were bleary and he leaned over to turn on the lamp at the side of the bed so he could see a little clearer. He rubbed his face and blinked at her.

"You said, we can be us forever," she said.

"You said that you wanted to be us one last time, like it was going to end" he said.

"You've kicked me out or walked away from me every time we've spoken since we met in that hallway," she said.

"Shit, I. Well. I'm sorry. I just. You're. I mean," he stopped and sat up a little straighter to run his fingers through his hair again and try and will himself to wake up enough to make sense. "You're a princess and a diplomat and I'm unemployable pilot and I'm trying really hard not to be inappropriate. I don't want to cause trouble for you or anyone else."

"You're not going to. Even princesses are allowed friends," she said.

He gave her a half smile but didn't try to put it into words. Just friends. Friends was fine. Friends was good. The crush had come on fast and it would fade just as fast. He just needed to ignore it until that happened. He could be her friend.

"What do you need?" he asked.

"To talk to someone who doesn't have a political stake in my life choices," she said.

"Is there any risk of my planet being attacked in the things you're about to tell me?"

"Why?"

"I just want to make sure that I genuinely don't have any political stake in your life choices before I agree to listen to them. Maybe I'm not qualified."

She laughed.

It was short and more air than sound.

“Allura?”

He swung his feet out of bed and reached across the space between them to take her hand. She had sounded fine but that laugh made him nervous. It was closer to be a sob than any kind of laughter he'd ever heard from her. Allura had cried a lot when she had been a little kid. Allura had started getting angry around the time she was eleven and had given up on tears entirely by the time she moved away to go to high school.

This sound wasn’t tears or rage. Had he ever heard her sound upset like that?

She wasn't looking at him. Her hair was still up and she was still wearing the same gown she had worn to the party. A few curls of hair had escaped from the up do and she was wrapped in a shawl made of a shimmery material. She didn't look small or vulnerable. Maybe a little softer than she usually did but no less like she could take him or anyone else in a fight. He couldn't tell if she was sad or angry, only that she wasn't as effortlessly confident as she usually was. He squeezed her fingers and she held his back just as tightly.

"No more jokes. I'm right here. Tell me anything," he said.

"I've been having a bad day," she said.

"Ok."

"I agreed to something that I thought was a good political decision but was based on incomplete information and I don't know if we can backtrack out of it without causing issues and I don't know if we can afford the issues," she said. "Earth is the gateway to the outer planets. The rest of the ring planets follow you. Your planet, not you personally. When Earth signed onto the Alliance, it was the start of the expansion. There hadn't been any change in the Alliance in centuries before that."

"The way that history is taught out here is that before the Martian treaties, the terms were too bad," he said.

"Exactly," she said looking up at him as though he'd said something profound. It was sixth grade history. He didn't understand that expression. "If the Alliance expected to survive, it can't survive as a coalition empire any more. Our future is in the ring planets and in balanced alliances with real trade terms. Altea's isolation, Galra's refusal to compromise, the Clexan's resource extraction plans, they can't stand or the alliance itself will collapse and it will probably collapse into war. I- We- That is- We need to do everything in our power to keep that from happening. And it starts with Earth. I can't start issues with Earth."

"Ok."

“Your planet will be a powerhouse in the next fifty years. The outer ring planets keep talking about making an alliance of their own and Earth is right in the middle of that. It matters. Relations with Earth matter more than the core planets want to believe. They want to imagine that the ring planets will just do as they’re told and that’s not how it’s going to work fifty years from now, a hundred years from now.”

“Ok.”

"I'm going to get mad at you if you keep saying that."

"Ok. Sorry. It's four am and I'm not a political scientist. I am not going to be able to offer a lot of nuanced opinion on this."

"I just need you to understand the stakes. Humans are hard to negotiate with because you try everything in a court of public opinion and your governments change multiple times a decade and once you think you have it figured out, the next human you meet is from a completely different culture with different etiquette rules and priorities. Your species is complicated and I hate your news sites." 

"I'm following. I am. And don't worry, everyone hates the news sites."

"How many other people have decades of negotiations and careful planning and the potential for an intergalactic war in our lifetime riding on the things that the news sites say?"

Shiro leaned forward and held her hand a little tighter, "I'll help you figure this out. I'll help you hire a PR person or a hacker to shut down every news feed on every continent and the moon if that's what needs to happen."

She laughed and it sounded more like a laugh. He was still holding her hand and when she leaned in as well, she settled with her forehead against his. The touch startled him but he didn't move. Her skin was a little cooler than his. She was looking down and he let himself stare at her until she sat back. He was left leaning in against nothing. He was still watching her too closely while she tucked her feet up under herself on the chair. She was silent for a long time, fiddling with the sleeve and staring off into space.

"You're going to wreck that dress," he said.

"Not a priority right now," she said.

"I'll lend you something comfortable. Go change. You'll feel better when you're not wearing silk and hairpins."

She raised her eyebrows.

"I also need five minutes to make a cup of coffee and brush my teeth before I can have a conversation that includes the words intergalactic war. The biggest thing I've had to worry about in the last year was getting my job back and whether or not my reflexes were making my physical therapist frown. Give me five minutes and then you can have my undivided attention for three days if that's how long it takes it explain it all."

"Ok," she said.

He got up and tossed her a pair of track pants and another black t-shirt and pointed her at the bathroom door. She was going to end up wearing the exact same thing as he was. The track pants were even the same brand though hers were blue and his were gray. He had never been particularly creative with his wardrobe but he’d also very rarely been in a position to share it. He put coffee on and washed his face in the sink. The hotel helpfully had the bathroom split into two parts so she could change while he brushed his teeth and then put on his arm.

By the time she came out, wearing his clothes and with her hair pulled back in a loose bun at the back of her neck, he was sitting on the bed with his feet crossed and the coffee in hand. She didn’t take any. She just crossed to him and climbed up to sit beside him. The clothes fit wrong on her, too big through the shoulders, too long, she wasn’t wearing shoes. Allura looking casual in his clothes was making his thoughts spin. They weren’t about anything. He wasn’t thinking inappropriate thoughts, he was just sitting there with his brain spinning instead of thinking about anything. She settled in beside him and put her head on his shoulder.

“Coffee?” she said.

“Yeah,” he said holding it up.

“Do you feel better? Can I tell you why I’m an idiot and you can tell me how to fix it?”

“I can try.”

“I agreed to marry Joshua.”

Shiro coughed on his coffee and turned to look at her. He was going to laugh at her but her expression looked serious. Wait. What? He asked, “Country club boy?”

“The one who knows nothing about Altean culture, yeah, that one.”

“Why?”

She sighed and slouched down a little to cuddle in against his arm. “Because I’m an idiot.”

“You aren’t so what’s the real reason?”

"The ambassadors since Coran haven't done a good job of making a positive impact on the opinion humans have of Alteans. The space witches thing is becoming a problem. We have to fix it. I agreed to come back to Earth to help. The new ambassador is bringing their entire Illia, the way that our ambassadors do when they go to Galra or Clexia. We're having a special housing complex built. I'm going to help them get settled and finish my studies and someone suggested a political marriage could help build public opinion," she said.

"And you said, 'Yeah, cool plan, bro?'" Shiro asked.

"On Altea there are multiple kinds of marriage. You can have three different spouses. The way it was explained to me was that it was a political marriage the way that Alteans have a political marriage. It's a sort of social alliance. Your bashra doesn't even live with you, they live with their own family, you're just expected to show up to certain festivals with them and take care of their children if they die. He’s a perfectly respectable person. I don’t mind being legally responsible for his children or sitting with him at the Flower Parades. A political marriage would be fine."

"That's not how things work on Earth," he said.

"I know. I know. That's why I'm an idiot,” she sank in a little closer. She was staring at the tv screen which showed a blurry image of the room on the dark screen. She stretched out her legs and her bare feet tapped against each other. The fidgeting was starting to make him nervous. Her energy was contagious. She was one of those people who made everyone else laugh when she laughed. This energy was leaking into her.

“You aren’t,” he said again.  

“When the advisers said they'd worked out a plan for a bashra, I should have known that there was something wrong with the plan, humans wouldn't agree to that. It wouldn't help with the court of public opinion problem because you'd see it as a weird alien thing that proved that there was something wrong with my entire species because we didn't even fall in love normally," she said.

"So back out."

"We've already stalled it," she said.

"Back out of it," he said again.

She looked up at him with a frustrated expression.

"If it has you up in the middle of the night breaking into people's bedrooms, you're not comfortable with it. It is better to back out of it now than to try and negotiate interplanetary problems while miserable or worse go through the political fall out of a divorce."

She sighed and nodded.

"You're still considering it."

"The advisers are right, it'll be politically beneficial to have a match like this."

"Politically beneficial isn't good enough," he said. "This is going to mean giving up your chance to have an illia of your own. I remember you being a little kid and talking about how excited you were to have an illia one day. You never talked about getting married or having kids but you were always going on about who was going to be part of your illia. Remember when we had that fight when we were eight and you told me I was out? You’ve been full of ideas of that since you were a tiny kid. It matters to you. It’s always mattered to you. And if you don’t think your happiness matters enough, then pick a political reason. Alteans aren't going to like their princess getting human married. Are you a good enough actress to fake loving someone you resent to the news sites? It's going to take one problem and replace it with a whole bunch of different ones."

"Ugh," she said turning her face into his shoulder.

“You’re not stupid enough to make a decision this bad,” he said.

“I might be,” she said.

“Nope,” he said.

He ruffled her hair and she jabbed him in the side with an elbow. It broke the tension for a minute while they shoved at each other and she finally laughed. Really laughed. Bright and real. She retreated from him to sit on the end of the bed and laugh at him. He wasn’t ready to open the conversation again. He wanted her to keep smiling for a few minutes.  

"It will be nice to have you back on the planet," he said.

"I had to look up where Arizona is," she said jumping onto the topic change.

"It's in America," he said.

"It's very very far away from Oxford."

"I know."

"If I pay for your plane ticket, will you come visit me?"

"I'd come visit even if I had to pay my own way."

“I’m the one with the royal treasury. I’ll buy you tickets. You can come and help me study. I’ll take you to pubs and we can do other British things. We can go get take away curry and drink too much tea and complain about the weather.”

“That sounds nice,” he said.

She nodded and climbed back up to sit beside him and sink in against his shoulder. He waited for her to get back into the conversation but she didn’t mention anything else about politics or intergalactic wars or Altean marriage customs. She just sat there, quiet and still and staring off into space. Her hair stuck to his shirt.

"Are you falling asleep?"

"It's almost dawn and I haven't slept properly since I got here."

"Lie down then," he said.

She looked up at him. He nudged her and got her to sit up enough that he could slide in under the blankets. If he had expected her to take the other side of the bed, he was deeply mistaken. She rolled into the space beside him and for once he kept his overactive thoughts quiet and just let himself enjoy it. She let him rearrange her so that he could pull her back in against his chest and wrap his arm around her. Her hair was in his face and she fit against him neatly, their bodies lined up. It did not take him long to doze off, his senses full of her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allura is wrong that he's walked away from her every time. She's done it too. But she's a little emotionally stirred up here and when he ran out on her at the party, it left her upset because she had been leaning on his presence to keep herself from freaking out about everything else. It felt like abandonment. (So if you're binge reading this and you're like - wait, author did you forget what you wrote - no, I didn't, I went back and reread it after writing that line and then decided to leave it in because while it's not true to the facts, it is true to her emotional state).


	7. A Day Off

Shiro woke long before she did. She had rolled into him and fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder and her arm draped across his chest. Her breathing was slow and even. He caught sight of the clock and was relieved to find he had a few hours before he needed to report in for duty. Then he let himself relax and stare at the ceiling. His fingers wove through her hair and he tried very hard not to think about anything but the way it felt running through his fingers. He gathered it up so it wasn't all over his face and smoothed it down over her back. 

She smelled nice. The remains of perfume and hair spray from the night before, his own laundry detergent, something less definable. The morning didn’t feel real. This was a dream and eventually he would be forced to wake up from it. The sun was shining through a gap in the drapes, lighting up the clothes he’d left scattered on the floor. He was warm and the kind of comfortable that felt like the edge of sleep. Her knee was hooked over his and he had matched his breathing to hers without even trying.

His phone cut through the illusion of the dream. Allura made a small sound and wrapped her arm around him tight enough that getting up was going to be hard. She didn't wake as he groped for the phone and answered it without looking just to make it shut up. He checked the clock, again, to be sure that he wasn't late. He still had an hour and a half. It wasn’t going to be his boss. If it was Lance, he was going to kill him.

"Hello."

"I need to confirm that the princess is indeed with you."

"Coran?"

"Good morning, Takashi Shirogane. I quite honestly did not know your full name before this morning when I had to go look into Allura's childhood records to find it so I could request your contact information from your superior officer,” Coran was chatting like it was a nice day at the park. Shiro clenched his eyes shut and took a slow breath. It appeared that the day was going to keep getting weirder.

"Yeah, that's my name. And yes, she's here. She's not awake but I can wake her up if you need to talk to her,” he said.

"No need, I made a special request and had to you signed off your roster and onto ours for the day."

"What?" Shiro asked.

"As a small delegation, we are entitled to requests for personnel. We rarely make them as most aliens are more trouble than they are help."

"Right, sure. What am I doing?"

"Whatever Allura wants you to."

Shiro opened his eyes and frowned down at the top of Allura's head and then at the phone. The screen showed the call timer and the words ‘blocked number’ and nothing else. Talking to Coran while she was sleeping on his chest was weird. Talking to Coran on the phone was strange to begin with and Coran's tone was at ease. He knew, or thought he knew, exactly what they had been getting up to and it apparently didn’t bother him.

"Doesn't she have things to do too?" Shiro asked.

"The one meeting that required her presence has been moved to tomorrow. Everything else will run without her."

"Why?"

"Why will it run without her? Well-"

Shiro cut him off before he could get going, "Why have you gone through all the trouble of assigning me to entertain her?"

"She has had a difficult year and then this trip has been particularly unpleasant for her. You are the only thing that has consistently made her smile in a long time. So today, you're officially tasked with doing whatever she wants."

Shiro laughed. He wasn’t sure if it was a happy sound or not.

"I'm not joking," Coran said.

"I know, it's still funny."

"I had always thought your sense of humour was absurd because you were a child but evidently your sense of humour is just as absurd now that you are an adult."

"Fine, yeah, it isn't really funny. I'm laughing because it's ridiculous. I am pretty sure I should be getting in trouble for spending time like this with a royal who is engaged to someone else.” 

"I'm not comfortable with the engagement and would really like you - as a friend and one of the few people that she trusts - to perhaps convince her that there are other options without political repercussions."

And with that, Coran hung up on him. Shiro was left staring at the call ended screen and trying to make sense of the words.

It felt like a long time later that she started to stir. Shiro had been playing with her hair, running his fingers up and down her back and her arm and just enjoying being held onto. She hadn't let go. The ringer on his now-silenced phone had woken her enough to make her grab on. He tried to disentangle himself and stand but she pulled him back. She was stronger than he was and so he’d just given up and settled into being pinned down by the sleeping alien princess.

Shiro scrolled through searches on his phone and tried to organize his thoughts into neat little boxes but they wouldn’t settle the way he wanted them too. The things he wanted were too far outside the realm of possibility. And yet. She was there. Something about the way Coran had just assumed she’d be there with him was making it hard to ignore.

She shifted and murmured and raised her face until her nose bumped against his jaw.

"Good morning," he said.

She murmured and pulled him in a little tighter. She was holding on hard enough to hurt.

"Allura," he said.

"Hm?" she said.

"You're going to break my ribs if you squeeze any tighter. I swear that I won't go anywhere," he said.

It took a moment.

"Hm," she said again.

Then she started to loosen her grip and relax. She stayed tucked in tight to his side but she wasn't holding onto him quite as hard. He stroked her hair and rubbed her back and let her wake up slow. She could break every bone in his body and the little moments when she reminded him of that made him nervous every time. But this was Allura. She could break his ribs but that didn't mean that she would hurt him.

"Allura?" he tried again.

She shifted. Her head was still on his chest, pressed in against the side with the missing arm. He wanted to get up and put on the prosthetic just so that he could hold onto her properly. She nuzzled into his collar bone and he knew she still wasn't entirely awake. He let his fingers linger in her hair, stroking it back from her face.

She finally surfaced from sleep and lifted her head to blink at him. His hand had been deep in her hair and when she lifted her head, it settled at the back of her neck and he left it there. Allura had eyes the color of blue skies. The Altean quirk of colored pupils that were as bright cotton candy pink as the marks on her cheeks. She hadn't ever adopted the earth trend for makeup but there was still something sleep smudged about her expression.

"Good morning," he said.

"Kashi?" she sounded confused.

"You fell asleep here. Coran moved all your appointments so you can stay if you want," he said.

"Coran?"

"He called, he isn't here."

"He called?"

"Yeah."

They had never been the kind of friends who had sleepovers. Shiro had never seen her first thing in the morning before. She was soft and sleepy and confused. He wasn't sure that she had figured out where she was yet. She was beautiful.

"Do you want coffee?" Shiro asked.

"I don't like coffee. I want to stay here."

"Are you alright? You seem a little out of it."

She nodded and curled herself in closer to him. Her arms tightened around his waist. He played with her hair and didn't question it. If he asked for clarification or explanation, he was afraid that she would get up and leave. He wanted to hold onto this moment. For as long as he could. Forever.

Neither of them moved. Neither of them spoke. It was a comfortable silence as Shiro played with her hair and ignored how badly he needed to go to the bathroom. He finally broke the silence.

“Allura?” he asked.

“Kashi?” her voice wasn’t much more than a mutter.

“What do you want to do today?”

“Put your hand back,” she said.

“Where?”

She reached up and found his wrist and guided his hand back to her neck where it had been resting while he twirled her hair. He waited but she didn’t raise her head or say anything else. He rubbed the back of her neck and she sighed and settled closer. He let his fingers dip beneath her collar and tried not to think about the reasons why he shouldn’t be doing that. Her skin was soft and smooth and she was so close.

“I have you all to myself today?” she asked.

Her voice was still heavy and muffled by his shoulder. She hadn’t bothered to raise her head to speak to him. She stayed still and close.

“I’m all yours,” he said.

“Can we go do human things?”

“Human things?”

“Something I haven’t done before, something far away from this place and anything that even resembles responsibility.”

“Should we finally go skinny dipping?”

She took a moment to register what he had said before she started to laugh. That joke felt like it was a million miles away and he’d been afraid she wouldn’t remember it. It had only been a few days since they sat on the rooftop and talked about teenage rebellions. Shiro laughed along with her because she had one of those laughs that took you by surprise and was impossible to ignore. She had a cute little giggle for state affairs or interviews but this was a full body laugh that he’s never seen her use in an interview clip.

“Too cold,” she said. She propped herself up on her elbow and grinned down at him. “I know what I want to do, I want to go to a concert.”

“What kind of concert?”

“I don’t care. Something loud and crowded.”

“Why?”

“When I was fifteen, I had a favourite band. I was fifteen. I went to an all-girls high school, having a favourite band was a social requirement. I can’t even remember what they were called now but I was not allowed to attend a concert because it was too hard to secure. I could have gone if I had rented out one of those big private boxes way up high but I wanted to be down by the stage with all the people,” she said.

“So, you want to see a pop act popular with fifteen year old girls?”

“Sure or something else. I want to be in a big loud crowd full of people who don’t know who I am and wouldn’t care if they did.”

“How are we going to get there?” he asked.

“I am an alien princess with the day off. I can get us wherever we want to be. I have highly advance technology.”

Shiro laughed.

 

She met Shiro in the hangar. She appeared at his shoulder wearing a wool cap pulled over her hair which did nothing to hide it but did make her ears less noticeable. She had found a pair of tight jeans and a soft blue sweater and a pair of ankle boots. She did a good job of looking human. Incredibly beautiful but humanly beautiful.

She flashed him a smile and then snapped into an official tone and walked over to the guard and filled out the paperwork to have one of the Altean shuttles brought around for them.

"Aren't they worried about you out and about without security?" he asked.

"The royal advisers would be very worried. They don't know so if you're talking to anyone but Coran about this, it might be better to pretend it never happened," she said as they waited for someone in a back office to finish processing the paper work.

"How much trouble am I going to be in if we get caught?"

"You won't. It was all my idea and I'm an adult and a royal. I can make my own terrible decisions. My father once took a river cruise on Rean. There's precedence for my family making terrible choices for their safety. Besides, this is quite safe. Technically, you're security."

Shiro didn't ask what a river cruise on Rean was or why it was a terrible decision. The shuttle was brought up from the hangar on a conveyor belt set up that probably cost far more than was necessary. It was a smooth egg done in white and blue with a string of Altean symbols on the side. Allura was restraining herself from letting her excitement show. After the signatures were signed and she had proven that she knew the codes to open the hatch, she grabbed is hand and squeezed hard.

"Are you really so excited to get out of here?" he asked inside.

"Yes. But that’s not the only reason. I am rarely given an opportunity to fly on my own. I have staff. Let the pilots fly while we do this paperwork. Let the pilot fly and rest before we arrive. Every time, every trip, no matter how short or long, it’s always someone else’s job to take the helm. Today, I want to fly," she said.

He laughed and watched her run her hands over the control panel with a smile on her face. The inside of the shuttle was about the size of a minivan. He could stand in it but only just barely. There was a sitting area near the back and then two seats set near the front. Allura dropped herself into one and started punching in codes to turn it all on. Shiro took the seat beside her and watched her fingers play over the dash. She was confident and happier than he'd seen her since she had appeared in that hallway.

She eased the ship out of the hangar on the maglev but as soon as they were in open air, she called a launch request and took off at an absurd speed. Shiro grabbed hold of the arms of his chair and swore as he was thrown backwards. He pulled on the seat belt as she was banking left to make the rise up into cruising altitude. The forest and the resort spread out below them. Greenery dotted with swimming pools and gray slate rooftops. Allura brought the ship up to a high altitude and checked the dials.

"You're fine, at this height, we're going to be above altitude flight for any human plane and we're still below orbital so you don't need to worry about that. The air is too thin up here for most things to fly," Shiro said.

"So I don't have to follow speed limits?" she asked.

Shiro laughed.

“I’m serious. Shall we see how fast this thing can go?”

“It’s a transit shuttle, Princess.”

“Don’t call me, Princess. And it can probably still go pretty fast.”

"You're going to kill us both."

"Do you want to drive?"

"Yes."

"Me first," she said.

"Don't kill me before I get a turn," he said.

He was grinning as she swung wide again and readjusted her thrusters. They were high enough that the horizon curved. The world below them was blurring. It was good to be in the air again. Shiro grabbed hold of the arms of the chair again before she opened up the shuttle to full speed. It was a transport shuttle. A little thing for moving people from city to city or from a orbital ship down to a planet's surface. It was basically a van. But it was an Altean van and it went absurdly fast. They had to approaching the speed of sound in near airless conditions.

Allura was laughing and playing with dials, getting a feel for the ship and the way it worked. Shiro let his attention drift back to her and away from the ground. She was good. She wasn't missing her gauges. She moved easily and fluidly and knew where every control was. The ship was beautiful and she made flying it look effortless. The flashes of light on the dashboard were nearly incomprehensible to him but they made her smile.

"Do you know how to fly it?" she asked.

"Haven't got a clue," he said.

She brought the ship down to a slower speed and flicked it over to auto. It would have been perfectly reasonable for her to point things out from where she was but she got up and sat on the arm of his chair and gave him a tour of the dials and screens. It was a distracting lesson. She was close at his side and she kept smiling at everything he did but the opportunity to learn how to fly an alien spaceship was too much too pass up. Taking the controls when she turned off the autopilot was a thrill.

"Too much, it's more sensitive than that," she said when he dropped altitude.

She was not a good teacher but he knew how to fly so having her muttering commentary and pushing buttons for him was a minor annoyance. Once he had control over the flight, she finally abandoned her spot at his side and settled back into the other chair. She brought up a navigation screen and let him drive while she plotted in the course. They traded the pilot's controls back and forth a few more times before realizing they were going to be late. Shiro had to give her back control to make the landing as they came in over the city.

They had flown past the international dateline and it was dark here. Shiro's body clock told him it was late morning and he was hit by the disorientation of finding himself someplace where that wasn't true. Allura parked in some sort of garage that was all automated so they didn't have to explain to anyone why they were flying an Altean royal shuttle.

Out on the street, it was noisy and crowded. Street vendors were yelling as they sold food and trinkets. The people milled around, looking in shop windows, watching a man with a cotton candy machine and many colours of sugar, just gathering to talk. Allura kept a hold on Shiro's arm as they wove through it and he readjusted their hands so that he could lace his fingers with hers. She squeezed his hand and tilted her head back to look up at the bright signs and windows on the buildings around them.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"I have never set foot in this country before," he told her.

"You have the phone machine, look it up," she said.

He laughed at that and pulled her out of the crowd onto a smaller side street. She kept watching the people going by as he searched for where he wanted to take her and how to get there. They needed to turn back and go the other way. Allura didn't mind. She was still in high spirits from her near supersonic run in a transit shuttle. She stopped to at every stall just to see what was there. She bought him a pastry shaped like a fish because she thought it was cute.

The concert was outdoors and free and busy. He hadn't wanted to try and find tickets and so this had been his solution. It was held in a large park by the river and Allura stopped when they reached the last intersection and she could see the park spread out in front of her, full of people. Farther from the stage, people had set up blankets and mats and children ran around and between the families. It was dark but it wasn't so late yet that the families had left the event. Closer to the stage, the crowd got denser. Everything was lit by bright lights and the music hammered from the speakers. On the other side of the river, the lights of the buildings glittered and the traffic still swarmed up and down the roads.

"Humans are better like this," she said.

"Better?"

"When you get all dressed up and proper at events like that banquet, you lose something of what makes your species so interesting. Humans are better like this when they're not so tightly controlled and organized and broken into their ranks and titles and groups."

"Thank you, I think," he said.

"I like you better when you're not wearing a uniform," she said.

"I like you all the time, even when you're being a stuffy princess," he said.

"I am not stuffy."

"You can be."

"Shut up."

"Make me."

She body checked him and he stumbled sideways. She laugh and he rolled his eyes. When the light changed, he dragged her across the street and into the crowd in the park. They made their way down into the depths of the crowd. Allura had wanted to be in the middle of it and Shiro pulled her along through the people. He didn't know the words to the songs. He didn't even know how to say hello in the language but the people around them did. They sang along and called things back to the performers on stage.

It didn't matter.

He wasn't there to see the singers. He was there for her and watching her smile was good enough. Her head tilted back and her eyes on the lights. She was radiant and Shiro could almost feel her getting swept up in the energy of the people around her. She started pickup up on the chorus in the one song so she could join the crowd in singing it back. It was breathtaking to watch her laugh and grin. She pulled him into it. He found himself as wrapped up in her excitement as she was.

When they finally left the concert and she went back to just holding his hand as they walked, he realized that they had been pressed together in the swirl of people and having her that half step away was like losing a piece of himself. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her back in as they walked along the water towards quieter places. Her arm settled around his waist and he smiled.

"We should do this more often," he said.

"We should do this all the time."

That made him laugh because it was an impossible idea but one he wanted more than he could put into words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I low key fucked up the geography here. The resort is somewhere in the Rockies in North America. I sent them to Seoul because I was in Myeongdong last weekend so it was in my head. Where is the actual concert? I dunno? Visually in my head? Banpo Park. 
> 
> But that doesn't make any geographical sense because holy hell would that a ridiculous walk. But I mean, it's not super obvious that Seoul is where they are so maybe they're in some other city with a really busy shopping district full of food carts and crowds and Allura's not buying Bungeo-ppang off of street vendors but some other fish shaped food. 
> 
> Anyways. This was supposed to be the last chapter but then I got distracted by self indulgent cute date stuff and now I need to write one more to bring it to the conclusion I want.


	8. We Could Do It

Shiro watched Allura toy with a spoon in her empty coffee cup. They'd gone to eat at a little restaurant in Paris. She was taking full advantage of having a shuttle and no one questioning where she took it. They had just chosen a restaurant at random as they wandered down the streets around the Louvre. They hadn't gone to the museum or anywhere else. Shiro had never imagined himself being the kind of person who stopped off in Paris for lunch but that was who he was today.

"Can I bring it up?" he asked.

"I'd rather you didn't," she said.

She looked up at him through her lashes and then her attention skated away. He'd left her to try things on in a shop and she had bought herself a new scarf that she was playing with in her lap, flicking the fringe back and forth between her fingers. She was the kind of fashionable that suited a place like this. Shiro was starting to think that they would have asked him to leave if he had been there alone.

He pushed that thought away. He had something he needed to say and letting himself slip into thoughts like that would just make him loose his nerve. He couldn't let himself think of her as a Princess instead of the little girl he had grown up with. She was just Allura. She had always been just Allura and she always would be, no matter what else was happening around her. She could be incredible and impressive and manage to make stirring a coffee look graceful and still be the same person he had known.

"My contract finishes before the conference does, I'm moving to the launch base the day after tomorrow. We'll cover security for the ships launching out of atmosphere. I got that one because I have flight training," he said.

She looked up at him, her expression unreadable.

"I am going to worry about you," he said.

"Me?" she gave him a smile like it was such a ridiculous thing to say.

"Yes, you. You're making a bad choice even if it's for a good reason," he said.

The smile evaporated and Just Allura was miles away. The woman across from him was a princess and a politician and not someone he should have ever had a chance to meet. He pushed that thought down with the others. She was still herself. She was just pissed at him.

"It's not your place to make that judgment," she said.

"I know but neither does anyone else and most of the people you speak to care about your rank. I don’t,” he said.

“No?” her voice was still polished.

“No, I care about you.”

She stared at him and he pushed on before she could say something that would ruin his nerve.

“I recognize that marrying for love might not be in your cards. You're making a political choice and you're the kind of leader to make that call. I know that. I'm not trying to tell you that you shouldn't do that," she started to interrupt him and he shook his head and pushed the rest of the words out, "But at least marry someone you can stand to be around."

"He's fine," Allura said.

"You broke into my room last night," Shiro said.

Allura tapped her spoon against the table top hard enough to make a sound. He could almost see her building the walls up around that outburst from the day before. Even the way she had been with him at the concert was getting farther away. The smiles and the teasing and the way she'd looked at him before she'd shot the shuttle into low orbit at ridiculous speeds all seemed impossible when she was holding herself like this. Her back a little straighter, her gaze level. The walls closed in and Allura was a politician, a public figure, a queen.

"That reaction was immature, I was overwhelmed and it was inappropriate," she said.

Shiro pressed his lips together and sat back in his chair. "Fine. But if it leaves you overwhelmed and makes you do inappropriate things then there is a problem. He's not-"

"He's not the problem."

"Allura."

"It is what it is. It's imperfect but it's the right decision. He's not the problem. There isn't a way to fix the problem that I have."

"Picking someone else might not fix all the political problems or the cultural issues but it could be better than this," Shiro said. "You're not ok with this. You're just a good enough politician to play it off like you are."

"Picking someone else isn't going to fix the problem."

"What does that mean? There isn't anyone who understands your culture better than he does? Who has more in common with you? Someone you can talk to instead of about? No one? That's not true. Don't rush this choice. You can fine somebody-"

"It doesn't matter.”

“It matters.”

“Takashi.”

“It matters, there has to be someone out there-”

“There isn't someone out there who is you."

She closed her mouth with a snap and her attention slid away from him. She tapped her spoon against her cup and then looked back at him. Her expression was almost angry as though he'd conned that answer out of her. Shiro let his breath out in a rush. He held her gaze and she didn't look away. The moment held. The silence held. The way she had said, "You," echoed in his head.

Someone who is you.

“Allura?” he said but he couldn’t put the rest of the thought together.

She sighed and leaned forward to keep talking, "When I think of Earth, I think of you first. You were my best friend. You always made me feel like a person. Not a princess or an alien or something else. When I'm with you, I feel like me. I don't even know what that means but it's true. I'm me when I'm with you.

"Joshua is fine. He's fine. I get along with him perfectly well. It's you that makes it a problem. You show up and I don't want to talk to other people. I don't want to share your attention with other people. I just want you," she waved her hand as though pushing off the entire conversation.

Shiro blinked. This hadn't made the list of all the ways he had imagined this conversation going.

He looked down and let his lips twitch into a smile. He held a hand out with his palm up. She didn't take it so he let it lay on the table like an offer. It took him a long time to find his voice.

"So just marry me."

She looked down at her hands and laughed at him.

"I mean that, why not?" he said, still smiling as he watched her.

"That's ridiculous. You would hate everything about being married to someone like me. The events and the press and the meetings? You wouldn't like it."

"I wouldn't like that part, no, but it would be worth it."

"What would?"

"You would."

Shiro's heart was beating too fast. Every word carried weight and he was going to ruin them somehow. He hadn't imagined the conversation going like this. He had planned out a completely different series of questions and answers and possibilities. He had planned to try and convince her that if she was going to settle for a human, it would be better to settle for a friend than some stranger. He had started the conversation with every intention of asking her this but he hadn't expected her to want him.

The world came to rest when she was there. Every plan he had had been turned upside down in the accident. He had been a kid with a plan since his twelfth birthday when they’d gone to see a launch at the local airfield. He was going into deep space. Then the plan had been torn out from under him and he had been left young and broken and without any idea where to go next. It followed him around but when he was sitting with Allura, he didn't feel broken. He could just be himself again even that self wasn't a deep space pilot any more.

With her, he started to find his feet again. He could see the person he could become now that he couldn’t be who he imagined. It had almost been perfect but it was all knocked sideways when she'd told him she'd agreed to a stupid engagement with some stranger she barely knew. The idea of losing her to politics and distance all over again was more than he could handle. He didn’t want to lose her.

She watched him with a startled expression. She opened her mouth once and then closed it again.

"If we were normal people, or if you were a normal person. No. Ok, I mean, if this was a normal thing without princesses and politics all mixed up in it," he closed his eyes and then tried again. "What I mean, is that I would ask you out to dinner and we could take it slow. I could get into the instructor's training program somewhere near Oxford. I'm never getting back in the kind of plane I want to fly but I could teach other people how to fly. I could do that at any UN facility. And you and I, we could take the train to visit each other on weekends. We could do normal."

"That sounds nice," she said.

"But this isn't that kind of normal. You have royal advisers and people to discuss everything with and they've already got it in their heads that we should - that you should be getting married. It gets in the way of normal."

"Yeah," she said with another little laugh and her attention skating away.

"I wouldn't be any less sure if we doing that instead of this," he said.

"Less sure of what?"

"Of you. Of us. Of our chances at being happy together."

Allura watched him and her gaze finally steadied. She didn't look so much like she was laughing at him or like she was angry with him. She looked at him like she was considering it. He sat back again and slipped his hands into his pockets. His hand closed around a little box and held it tight. He had already said the words but she hadn't seemed to believe that he meant it.

He meant it.

He had made this decision while she had been sleeping curled up against him. This was what he wanted. He wanted a life time of mornings with her cuddled into his side. He wanted her to laugh and grab his hand in crowded places like she had at the concert. He wanted to be the person she commandeered high speed vehicles with and danced with at parties. He wanted to know that she was happy. He wanted to be the one to make her happy.

He had sent her off to try on sparkling dresses and ridiculous hats while called Coran. The last thing he had wanted was to talk her into this offer only to find out that the Altean political advisers or her father or someone else who had decision making powers could ruin it. Coran had promised that if it was what Allura wanted, he could push just about anything past the King's inner circle.

He had also bought a ring. It wasn’t a ring that suited a princess but he wanted this to be real. Even if she had only agreed to it because they were friends, he wanted this little bit of proof that he meant it. Inside the blue box was a white gold band and a small blue stone. He couldn’t afford a diamond. He couldn’t afford this. He was pretty sure she wasn’t going to care.

"I'm going to ask you to marry me again but only if you promise not to laugh at me this time," he said.

She did laugh but it wasn't a mean sound and she smiled at him when she stopped it. She sank her teeth into her lower lip and cut the giggle short. 

"This is a bad idea for you," she said.

"Why is that?"

"Because I will say yes and then you will have to put up with all the politics and people and the mess of being a prince."

"Shit. Would you really give me a title?" he asked with the straightest face he could muster while she was smiling at him like that.

"Yes." Her straight face was much better than his.

"Shit. That's a bad idea. Maybe I shouldn't do it."

"If you ask me nicely, I'll get you out of being a prince. It’s not the same title in Altean. It’s just the closest translation I could think of. I can figure out a way to do it," she said with another laugh and the return of the radiant smile. 

"Maybe I'd make a good prince," he said.

"You would. You will," her smile shifted from teasing to something deeper. A warm, thoughtful smile that made him want to kiss her. He’d never let himself think about how much he wanted to kiss her before. He returned the smile but he wasn’t thinking about titles.

"We could do it, you and I,” she said.

Shiro raised his eyebrows at her. “Do it?”

"We could convince our planets to be allies. We can show them the good, the best that we have to offer. We can show people what we can do together. We could do that."

"We can do that," Shiro echoed.

Allura leaned in and rested her elbows on the table. She was smiling at him. "You had a question?"

"Allura?"

"Yes?"

He lost his nerve for a second even though she had already told him the answer. He looked down at the table for a moment before pulling out the little box. Her smile broke a little wider and he saw her start to reach for it before glancing up at him as though unsure if that was acceptable. He opened it for her because that was what people did in movies.

"Will you marry me?"

"I would love to marry you."

She let him put the ring on her hand and he managed it without dropping it. Once he had her hand, he didn’t let it go. She held onto his fingers and looked at their hands.

“I like this tradition. Should I get you something?”

“What you should do is kiss me and then let me drive to wherever we go next,” he said.

She flashed him a grin and he pulled on her hand. She let him draw her across the table. He hesitated before he closed the last of the space between them and kissed her for the first time.


End file.
